Physical downlink control channel with multi-transmission reception points (trps)

ABSTRACT

Embodiments disclosed herein can enable multi-TRP transmission for PDCCH to achieve diversity gain for the potential benefits to URLLC use cases with challenging reliability/robustness requirements. Specifically, multi-TRP transmission for PDCCH can be performed at different levels as follows: 1. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on repetition level; 2. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on CCE level; and/or 3. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on REGB level.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Appl. No. 62/788,485, filed Jan. 4, 2019, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Various embodiments generally may relate to the field of wireless communications.

SUMMARY

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include transmitting each physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) with multiple repetitions. In these embodiments, the number of repetitions for each PDCCH can be defined as repetition levels and can be configured as a parameter in the search space or Control Resource Set (CORESET).

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include transmitting different repetitions of the PDCCH from different Transmission Reception Points (TRPs) so that spatial diversity can be achieved among different repetitions. This can be particularly beneficial if different repetitions are transmitted in localized time/frequency manner with limited achievable time/frequency diversity over different repetitions.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include enabling multi-TRP transmission on repetition level. In these embodiments, multiple Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) states, each of which is associated with a TRP, can be activated simultaneously for the CORESET.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include for a PDCCH with several repetitions, cyclically associating each repetition with one of several activated TCI states. For example, if two TCI states, namely TCI #0 and TCI #1, are activated, the PDCCH candidate of RL 4 can be transmitted with the following:

-   -   repetition-to-TCI mapping: {Repetition #1: TCI #0; Repetition         #2: TCI #0; Repetition #3: TCI0; Repetition #4: TCI1}.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include using a Medium Access Control control element (MAC CE) to activate multiple TCI states among all configured TCI states for the CORESET.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include the MAC CE in the embodiments described above or other embodiments described herein. The fields of the 32 bits MAC CE in these embodiments can be defined as follows:

-   -   Serving Cell ID: This field indicates the identity of the         Serving Cell for which the MAC CE applies. In some embodiments,         the length of the field is 5 bits;     -   Bandwidth Part (BWP) ID: This field contains BWP-Id, as         specified in TS 38.331 [2], of a downlink bandwidth part for         which the MAC CE applies. In some embodiments, the length of the         BWP ID field is 2 bits;     -   CORESET ID: This field indicates a Control Resource Set         identified with ControlResourceSead as specified in TS 38.331         [2], for which the TCI State is being indicated. In some         embodiments, the length of the field is 2 bits;     -   TCI State ID #i: This field indicates the i^(th) TCI state         identified by TCI-StateId as specified in TS 38.331 [2]         applicable to the Control Resource Set identified by CORESET ID         field. In some embodiments, the length of the field is 6 bits;     -   R: Reserved bit, set to “0”.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include, when the PDCCH repetition is configured in the time domain, for example, by RRC signaling, performing TRP/TCI cycling in a time domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8}     -   Repetition-TimeInterval, for example, {0OS, 1OS, 2OS, 3OS}     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain}

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include the following RRC parameters which can be defined as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level: defines the (maximum) number of repetitions         supported by the PDCCH. If the number refers to the maximum RL,         then all even number of repetitions up to the maximum number are         supported.     -   Repetition-TimeInterval; defines the number of OFDM symbols         between adjacent repetitions in the time domain. If 0OS is         configured, the continuous repetition is configured. If non-zero         value is configured, discontinuous repetition is configured.     -   Repetition-Domain: defines the domain of repetition.         Specifically, repetition can be performed time domain, frequency         domain and time-frequency domain according to the selection by         this parameter.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include, when PDCCH repetition is configured in the frequency domain, for example, by RRC signaling, performing TRP/TCI cycling in the frequency domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8}     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {ORB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB}     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain}

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include the RRC parameters described in the embodiments above, wherein parameters are defined similar to those above, except for the following parameters:

-   -   Repetition-FreqInterval: defines the number of RBs between         adjacent repetitions in the frequency domain. If ORB is         configured, the continuous repetition in the frequency domain is         configured. If non-zero value is configured, discontinuous         repetition in frequency is configured.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include, when PDCCH repetition is configured in the time-frequency domain, for example, by RRC signaling, performing TRP/TCI cycling in the time-frequency domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8}     -   Repetition-TimeInterval, for example, {0OS, 1OS, 2OS, 3OS}     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {ORB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB}     -   Repetition-Direction, for example, {TimeFirst, FreqFirst}     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {ORB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB}     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain}

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include the RRC parameters described in the embodiments above, with the addition of the following parameter:

-   -   Repetition-Direction: defines the first repetition direction. If         TimeFirst is configured, the repetitions are performed first in         the time domain until the half of repetitions are mapped, then         in the frequency domain. Otherwise, the repetitions are         performed first in the frequency domain until the half of         repetitions are mapped, then in the time domain.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include, in this method, performing multi-TRP transmission in Control Channel Element (CCE) level so that different CCEs can be transmitted from different TRPs.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include configuring the TRP/TCI cycling by activating multiple TCI states for the CORESET. In these embodiments, this can be more straightforwardly applied to the non-interleaved PDCCH transmission, where all CCEs of PDCCH are transmitted without using precoder cycling.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include performing multi-TRP transmission in REGB level so that different REGBs can be transmitted from different TRPs.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include configuring the TRP/TCI cycling activating multiple TCI states for the CORESET. In these embodiments, when TRP/TCI cycling is configured for distributed PDCCH in which REGB based precoder cycling is enabled, additional spatial diversity can be achieved.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include an apparatus, the apparatus is configured to:

construct a PDCCH blind decoding candidate; and

transmit each PDCCH blind decoding candidate in a plurality of repetitions,

wherein at least a first repetition is transmitted from a first TRP, and a second repetition is transmitted from a second TRP.

In these embodiments, the means to transmit can be to transmit the plurality of repetitions in a time domain. In these embodiments, the means to transmit can be to transmit plurality of repetitions in a frequency domain. In these embodiments, the means to transmit can be to transmit plurality of repetitions in a time-frequency domain. In these embodiments, the means to transmit can be to transmit the plurality of repetitions on a CCE level. In these embodiments, the means to transmit can be to transmit the plurality of repetitions on a REGB level.

In these embodiments, the apparatus can be a base station, or part of a base station. In these embodiments, the apparatus can a UE, or part of UE.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include an apparatus, the apparatus is configured to:

construct a PDCCH blind decoding candidate; and

transmit each PDCCH blind decoding candidate in a plurality of repetitions, wherein at least a first repetition is transmitted from a first TRP, and a second repetition is transmitted from a second TRP.

In these embodiments, the apparatus can transmit the plurality of repetitions in a time domain. In these embodiments, the apparatus can transmit plurality of repetitions in a frequency domain. In these embodiments, the apparatus can transmit plurality of repetitions in a time-frequency domain. In these embodiments, the apparatus can transmit the plurality of repetitions on a Control Channel Element (CCE) level. In these embodiments, the apparatus can transmit the plurality of repetitions on a Resource Element Group Block (REGB) level.

In these embodiments, the apparatus can be a base station, or part of a base station. In these embodiments, the apparatus can be a UE, or part of UE.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a method. The method includes:

constructing, or causing to construct, a PDCCH blind decoding candidate; and

transmitting, or causing to transmit, each PDCCH blind decoding candidate in a plurality of repetitions,

wherein at least a first repetition is transmitted from a first TRP, and a second repetition is transmitted from a second TRP.

In these embodiments, the transmitting, or causing to transmit, can comprise transmitting the plurality of repetitions in a time domain. In these embodiments, the transmitting, or causing to transmit, can comprise transmitting the plurality of repetitions in a frequency domain. In these embodiments, the transmitting, or causing to transmit, can comprise transmitting the plurality of repetitions in a time-frequency domain. In these embodiments, the transmitting, or causing to transmit, can comprise transmitting the plurality of repetitions on a CCE level. In these embodiments, the transmitting, or causing to transmit, can comprise transmitting the plurality of repetitions on a REGB level.

In these embodiments, the apparatus can be a base station, or part of a base station. In these embodiments, the apparatus can a UE, or part of UE.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include an apparatus comprising means to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or any other method or process described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions to cause an electronic device, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors of the electronic device, to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or any other method or process described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include an apparatus comprising logic, modules, or circuitry to perform one or more elements of a method described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or any other method or process described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a method, technique, or process as described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or portions or parts thereof.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include an apparatus comprising: one or more processors and one or more computer-readable media comprising instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method, techniques, or process as described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or portions thereof.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a signal as described in or related to any of the embodiments above, or portions or parts thereof.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a signal in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a method of communicating in a wireless network as shown and described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a system for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

Some embodiments of this disclosure can include a device for providing wireless communication as shown and described herein.

Any of the above-described embodiments may be combined with any other embodiments (or combination of embodiments), unless explicitly stated otherwise. The foregoing description of one or more implementations provides illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the scope of embodiments to the precise form disclosed. Modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings or may be acquired from practice of various embodiments.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS/FIGURES

The present disclosure is described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements. Additionally, the left most digit(s) of a reference number identifies the drawing in which the reference number first appears. In the accompanying drawings:

FIG. 1 graphically illustrates a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 2 graphically illustrates a MAC control element (CE) having explicit signaling of activated TCI state ID according to the exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 graphically illustrates a time domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 4 graphically illustrates a frequency domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 5 graphically illustrates a time-frequency domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart of an exemplary operation in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example architecture of a system of a network in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 8 illustrates an example architecture of a system including a first CN in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 9 illustrates an architecture of a system including a second CN in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of infrastructure equipment 1000 in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of a platform in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 12 illustrates example components of baseband circuitry and radio front end modules (RFEM) in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 13 illustrates various protocol functions that can be implemented in a wireless communication device in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 14 illustrates components of a core network in accordance with various embodiments;

FIG. 15 is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, of a system to support Network Functions Virtualization (NFV);

FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, able to read instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein; and

FIG. 17 illustrates a flowchart of an exemplary operation in accordance with various embodiments.

The present disclosure will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DISCLOSURE

The following detailed description refers to the accompanying drawings. The same reference numbers may be used in different drawings to identify the same or similar elements. In the following description, for purposes of explanation and not limitation, specific details are set forth such as particular structures, architectures, interfaces, techniques, etc. in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various aspects of various embodiments. However, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the present disclosure that the various aspects of the various embodiments may be practiced in other examples that depart from these specific details. In certain instances, descriptions of well-known devices, circuits, and methods are omitted so as not to obscure the description of the various embodiments with unnecessary detail. For the purposes of the present document, the phrase “A or B” means (A), (B), or (A and B).

Beam management solutions have been standardized in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) new radio (NR) release-15. These solutions are designed to support user equipment (UE) with directional transmit/receive beamforming operations. Specifically, supported techniques include transmission of beam indications to the UE, reporting of Layer 1 reference signal received power (L1-RSRP) based on channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS), and synchronizing signal/physical broadcast channel (SS/PBCH) block and beam recovery procedures in case of detected beam failure event.

To support downlink (DL) beam selection at the UE, a transmission configuration indication (TCI) framework has been introduced. The TCI framework is based on a combination of radio-resource-control (RRC), medium-access-control control-element (MAC CE), and downlink control information (DCI) signalling. Specifically, RRC is used to configure a set of TCI states and their respective Reference Signals (RSs), and MAC CE or DCI is used to dynamically select among the configured TCI states. By virtue of such combination, RRC reconfiguration signalling can be avoided for UEs only moving within a cell to enable the distributed implementation of the radio protocols in a base station with separate central unit (CU) and distributed units (DU).

For multi-TRP/panel transmission, both multiple physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) and single PDCCH designs are supported in release 16. Also in consideration are enhanced PDCCH transmission for Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency (URLLC) reliability/robustness enhancement with multi-TRP/panel/beam, including the case of ideal backhaul. Specifically, the number of TRP/panel/beams and concrete repetition/diversity techniques of PDCCH and Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) may benefit from further development.

Overview

Data and signaling messages in NR are carried in the downlink (DL) and/or uplink (UL) physical control channels. As an example, the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) can be used for DL scheduling assignments, UL scheduling grants, and/or other purposes such as slot format indication, preemption indication, and/or power control. The information carried by the PDCCH is commonly referred to as Downlink Control Information (DCI) which can include control information for one or more User Equipments (UEs). The DCI can be formatted for one UE or a group of one or more UEs.

Embodiments disclosed herein can enable multi-TRP transmission for PDCCH to achieve diversity gain for the potential benefits to URLLC use cases with challenging reliability/robustness requirements. Specifically, multi-TRP transmission for PDCCH can be performed at different levels as follows:

1. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on repetition level;

2. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on CCE level; and/or

3. PDCCH with multi-TRP transmission on REGB level.

Exemplary Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) Structure

FIG. 1 graphically illustrates a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) in accordance with various embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 1, a PDCCH structure 100 includes one or more PDCCH blind decoding candidates 102. Generally, to decode the PDCCH, the UEs have to ascertain various parameters, such as the location, structure, and/or scrambling code to provide some examples, of the PDCCH. But these parameters are not communicated to the UEs. However, the UEs can be configured with some search space (SS) that potentially includes the PDCCH. The UEs monitor scheduled PDCCHs within this SS and attempt to decode signals within this SS using various different types of parameters based on a trial and error method, often referred to as Blind Decoding.

As illustrated in FIG. 1, the PDCCH structure 100 includes a PDCCH blind decoding candidate 102 that the UEs attempt to blindly decode. In some embodiments, the PDCCH blind decoding candidate 102 can be configured in accordance with various parameters, such as locations, structures, and/or scrambling codes to provide some examples. In these embodiments, if one of the PDCCH blind decoding candidates 102 is correctly decoded, the UEs can continue to receive the data channel scheduled by the PDCCH. The PDCCH blind decoding candidate 102 can be constructed by several levels of building blocks. Repetition transmission can be supported by PDCCH, so that the PDCCH blind decoding candidate 102 can be comprised of one or several repetitions, denoted as Repetition #1 through Repetition #N in FIG. 1, depending on the repetition level (RL). In some embodiments, each of the Repetition #1 through Repetition #N can be transmitted from different TRPs to form a multi-TRP transmission so that spatial diversity can be achieved among the Repetition #1 through Repetition #N. Examples of one or more of these multiple TRPs are further described below in FIG. 7 through FIG. 16.

Depending on the aggregation level, each repetition includes one or several control channel element (CCEs), denoted as CCE #1 through CCE #L in FIG. 1, to support traditional control channel link adaptation. Each CCE can include several resource element group blocks (REGBs), denoted as REGB #1 through REGB #L in FIG. 1. In some embodiments, each CCE can include multiple, for example, two (2) or three (3), REGs and, in some embodiments, be transmitted by using the same precoder. The usage of REGB offers the trade-off between spatial diversity achieved by each CCE and channel estimation performance depending on the number of reference signals experiencing the same effective channels taking the precoding operation into account.

In Rel-15, only one TCI state is activated for the control channel resource set (CORESET). Given that each TCI state is typically associated with one TRP, PDCCH can be transmitted from the TRP corresponding to the TCI state activated for the CORESET. As a result, different precoders used for different REGBs of the CCEs belonging to the same PDCCH are applied to the same TRP.

To achieve more spatial diversity for the reliability enhancement beneficial to URLLC services, embodiments of the disclosure can realize multi-TRP transmission for PDCCH. Multi-TRP transmission can take place in different levels of building blocks of PDCCH as to be described in further detail below.

Exemplary PDCCH with Multi-TRP Transmission on Repetition Level

As to be described in further detail below, a PDCCH can be transmitted with multiple repetitions. The number of repetitions for the PDCCH is defined as repetition levels and can be configured as a parameter in the search space (SS) or control channel resource set (CORESET). Different repetitions of the PDCCH can be transmitted from different TRPs so that spatial diversity can be achieved among different repetitions. This can be particularly beneficial if different repetitions are transmitted in localized time/frequency manner with limited achievable time/frequency diversity over different repetitions.

To enable multi-TPR transmission on repetition level, multiple Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) states can be activated simultaneously for the CORESET. In some embodiments, each of the multiple TCI states can be associated with one or more TRPs. In some situations, each repetition can be cyclically associated with one of several activated TCI states for a PDCCH having several repetitions. For example, if two TCI states, namely TCI #0 and TCI #1, are activated, the PDCCH candidate of RL 4 can be transmitted with the following repetition-to-TCI mapping:

-   -   {Repetition #0: TCI #0; Repetition #1: TCI #0;     -   Repetition #2: TCI1; Repetition #3: TCI1}.

As a result, the Repetition #0 and Repetition #1 can be transmitted from the TRP of TCI #0, and Repetition #2 and Repetition #3 from the TRP of TCI #1.

FIG. 2 graphically illustrates a MAC control element (CE) having explicit signaling of activated TCI state ID according to the exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure. In the exemplary embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2, a MAC control element (CE) 200 can be used to activate multiple TCI states among all configured TCI states for the CORESET. The following option can be used to activate multiple TCI states for the CORESET. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 2, the MAC CE 200 can activate up to 4 TCI states, denoted TCI State ID #1 through TCI State ID #4 in FIG. 2, for the CORESET.

In the exemplary embodiment illustrated in FIG. 2, the fields of the MAC CE 200 can be defined as follows:

-   -   Serving Cell ID: This field indicates the identity of the         Serving Cell for which the MAC CE applies. In some embodiments,         the length of the field is 5 bits;     -   Bandwidth Part (BWP) ID: This field contains BWP-Id, as         specified in Technical Standard (TS) 38.331, of a downlink         bandwidth part for which the MAC CE applies. In some         embodiments, the length of the BWP ID field is 2 bits;     -   CORESET ID: This field indicates a Control Resource Set         identified with ControlResourceSetId as specified in TS 38.331,         for which the TCI State is being indicated. In some embodiments,         the length of the field is 2 bits;     -   TCI State ID #i: This field indicates the i^(th) TCI state         identified by TCI-StateId as specified in TS 38.331 applicable         to the Control Resource Set identified by CORESET ID field. In         some embodiments, the length of the field is 6 bits;     -   R: Reserved bit, set to “0”.

The discussion to follow is to describe different possible repetition structures. Depending on the different possible repetition structures, different time/frequency multi-TRP transmission can be realized as to be described in further detail below.

Exemplary Time Domain Repetition

FIG. 3 graphically illustrates a time domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments. Specifically, FIG. 3 illustrates a repetition 300, or TRP/TCI cycling, in the time domain. As illustrated in FIG. 3, when PDCCH repetition is in the time domain, for example, by RRC signaling, the TRP/TCI cycling can similarly be performed in the time domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8},     -   Repetition-TimeInterval, for example, {1OS, 1OS, 2OS, 3OS},     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain},         where Repetition-Level represents defines the (maximum) number         of repetitions supported by the PDCCH. If the number refers to         the maximum RL, then all even number of repetitions up to the         maximum number are supported. The Repetition-TimeInterval         represents the number of OFDM symbols between adjacent         repetitions in the time domain. If 0OS is configured, the         continuous repetition in the time domain is configured. If         non-zero value is configured, discontinuous repetition in the         time domain is configured. The Repetition-Domain represents the         domain of repetition. Specifically, repetition can be performed         in the time domain, frequency domain and time-frequency domain         according to the selection by this parameter.

Exemplary Frequency Domain Repetition

FIG. 4 graphically illustrates a frequency domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments. Specifically, FIG. 4 illustrates a repetition 400 in the frequency domain. As illustrated in FIG. 4, when PDCCH repetition is configured in the frequency domain, e.g., by RRC signaling, the TRP/TCI cycling can be performed in the frequency domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8},     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {0RB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB},     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain},         where Repetition-Level and Repetition-Domain have been         previously described above and Repetition-FreqInterval         represents the number of resource blocks (RBs) between adjacent         repetitions in the frequency domain. If ORB is configured, the         continuous repetition in the frequency domain is configured. If         non-zero value is configured, discontinuous repetition in the         frequency domain is configured.

Exemplary Time-Frequency Domain Repetition

FIG. 5 graphically illustrates a time-frequency domain repetition structure in accordance with various embodiments. Specifically, FIG. 5 illustrates a repetition 500 in the time-frequency domain. As illustrated in FIG. 5, when PDCCH repetition is configured in the time-frequency domain, e.g., by RRC signaling, the TRP/TCI cycling can be performed in the time-frequency domain. The RRC parameters determining the repetition structure can be added to CORESET IE definitions as follows:

-   -   Repetition-Level, for example, {2, 4, 8},     -   Repetition-TimeInterval, for example, {0OS, 1OS, 2OS, 3OS},     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {0RB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB},     -   Repetition-Direction, for example, {TimeFirst, FreqFirst}     -   Repetition-FreqInterval, for example, {0RB, 2RB, 4RB, 8RB},     -   Repetition-Domain, for example, {timeDomain, freqDomain,         timeFreqDomain},         where Repetition-Level, Repetition-TimeInterval,         Repetition-FreqInterval, and Repetition-Domain have been         previously described above and Repetition-Direction represents         the first repetition direction. If TimeFirst is configured, the         repetitions are performed first in the time domain until the         half of repetitions are mapped, then in the frequency domain.         Otherwise, the repetitions are performed first in the frequency         domain until the half of repetitions are mapped, then in the         time domain.         Exemplary PDCCH with Multi-TRP Transmission on Control Channel         Element (CCE) Level

Alternatively, or in addition to, multi-TRP transmission can be performed in CCE level so that different CCEs can be transmitted from different TRPs. The TRP/TCI cycling as described above can be configured by activating multiple TCI states for the CORESET. This can be more straightforwardly applied to the non-interleaved PDCCH transmission, where all CCEs of PDCCH are transmitted without using precoder cycling. When TRP/TCI cycling is configured, spatial diversity is enhanced for localized PDCCH transmission.

Exemplary PDCCH with Multi-TRP Transmission on Resource Element Group Block (REGB) Level

Alternatively, or in addition to, multi-TRP transmission can be performed at the REGB level so that different REGBs can be transmitted from different TRPs. The TRP/TCI cycling described as described above can be configured by activating multiple TCI states for the CORESET. When TRP/TCI cycling is configured for distributed PDCCH in which REGB based precoder cycling is enabled, additional spatial diversity can be achieved.

Exemplary Cooperation Cluster Management Implementation Aspects

A suitable selection of the multi-TRP configuration depends on the time variability of the user and/or the user context. Various embodiments can differentiate the following:

-   -   Static User and static environment: multi-TRP configuration may         be maintained over an extended lifetime (e.g., several hours);     -   Limited User and/or environment variability (e.g. through         mobility of the user or the environment): the life-time of         multi-TRP configurations is set to a limited value, typically         several seconds or minutes;     -   High User and/or environment variability (e.g. high-speed users         such as vehicles, etc.): the life-time of multi-TRP         configurations is set to a very limited value, typically several         seconds or microseconds.

In some situations, different TRPs may have different life-time settings depending on its exposure to changing environment (e.g., oriented towards a street with vehicles passing by, etc.)

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart of an exemplary operation in accordance with various embodiments. The disclosure is not limited to this operational description. Rather, it will be apparent to ordinary persons skilled in the relevant art(s) that other operational control flows are within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. The following discussion describes an exemplary operational control flow 600.

At operation 602, the operational control flow 600 observes variability of the user and/or environment.

At operation 604, the operational control flow 600 determines life-time of (concerned) multi-TRP configurations. These multi-TRP configurations can be different for each TRP.

At operation 606.1 through 606.N, the operational control flow 600 configures TRP #1 through TRP #N.

At operation 608.1 through 608.N, the operational control flow 600 determines whether their corresponding TRP #1 through TRP #N lifetimes have expired. If their corresponding TRP #1 through TRP #N lifetimes have expired, the operational control flow 600 reverts to operation 604. Otherwise, the operational control flow 600 reverts to back to operation 608.1 through 608.N when their corresponding TRP #1 through TRP #N lifetimes have not expired.

Exemplary Systems for Implementing the EXEMPLARY Multi-TRP Transmissions

FIG. 7 illustrates an example architecture of a system of a network in accordance with various embodiments. The following description is provided for an example system 700 that operates in conjunction with the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system standards and Fifth Generation (5G) or NR system standards as provided by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications. However, the example embodiments are not limited in this regard and the described embodiments may apply to other networks that benefit from the principles described herein, such as future 3GPP systems (e.g., Sixth Generation (6G)) systems, IEEE 802.16 protocols (e.g., WMAN, WiMAX, etc.), or the like.

As illustrated in FIG. 7, the system 700 includes User Equipment (UE) 701 a and UE 701 b (collectively referred to as “UEs 701” or “UE 701”). In this example, UEs 701 are illustrated as smartphones (e.g., handheld touchscreen mobile computing devices connectable to one or more cellular networks), but may also comprise any mobile or non-mobile computing device, such as consumer electronics devices, cellular phones, smartphones, feature phones, tablet computers, wearable computer devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, wireless handsets, desktop computers, laptop computers, in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), in-car entertainment (ICE) devices, an Instrument Cluster (IC), head-up display (HUD) devices, onboard diagnostic (OBD) devices, dashtop mobile equipment (DME), mobile data terminals (MDTs), Electronic Engine Management System (EEMS), electronic/engine control units (ECUs), electronic/engine control modules (ECMs), embedded systems, microcontrollers, control modules, engine management systems (EMS), networked or “smart” appliances, MTC devices, M2M, IoT devices, and/or the like.

In some embodiments, any of the UEs 701 may be Internet of Things (IoT) UEs, which may comprise a network access layer designed for low-power IoT applications utilizing short-lived UE connections. An IoT UE can utilize technologies such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) or Machine-Type Communications (MTC) for exchanging data with an MTC server or device via a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN), Proximity-Based Service (ProSe), or Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, sensor networks, or IoT networks. The M2M or MTC exchange of data may be a machine-initiated exchange of data. An IoT network describes interconnecting IoT UEs, which can include uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices (within the Internet infrastructure), with short-lived connections. The IoT UEs may execute background applications (e.g., keep-alive messages, status updates, etc.) to facilitate the connections of the IoT network.

The UEs 701 can be configured to connect, for example, communicatively couple, with a Radio Access Network (RAN) 710. In some embodiments, the RAN 710 may be a Next Generation (NG) RAN or a 5G RAN, an evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN), or a legacy RAN, such as a UTRAN or GSM EDGE Radio Access Network (GERAN). As used herein, the term “NG RAN,” or the like, may refer to a RAN 710 that operates in an NR or 5G system 700, and the term “E-UTRAN,” or the like, may refer to a RAN 710 that operates in an LTE or 4G system 700. The UEs 701 utilize connections (or channels) 703 and 704, respectively, each of which comprises a physical communications interface or layer (discussed in further detail below).

In this example, the connections 703 and 704 are illustrated as an air interface to enable communicative coupling, and can be consistent with cellular communications protocols, such as a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol, a Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network protocol, a Push-to-Talk (PTT) protocol, a Push-to-Talk over Cellular (POC) protocol, a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) protocol, a 3GPP LTE protocol, a 5G protocol, a NR protocol, and/or any of the other communications protocols discussed herein. In some embodiments, the UEs 701 may directly exchange communication data via a Proximity-Based Service (ProSe) interface 705. The ProSe interface 705 may alternatively be referred to as a sidelink (SL) interface 705 and may comprise one or more logical channels, including but not limited to a Physical Sidelink Control Channel (PSCCH), a Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH), a Physical Sidelink Downlink Channel (PSDCH), and a Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel (PSBCH).

The UE 701 b is shown to be configured to access an Access Point (AP) 706 (also referred to as “WLAN node 706,” “WLAN 706,” “WLAN Termination 706,” “WT 706” or the like) via connection 707. The connection 707 can comprise a local wireless connection, such as a connection consistent with any IEEE 802.11 protocol, wherein the AP 706 would comprise a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi®) router. In this example, the AP 706 is shown to be connected to the Internet without connecting to the core network of the wireless system (described in further detail below). In various embodiments, the UE 701 b, RAN 710, and AP 706 can be configured to utilize LWA operation and/or LWIP operation. The LWA operation may involve the UE 701 b in RRC_CONNECTED being configured by a RAN node 711 a-b to utilize radio resources of LTE and WLAN. LWIP operation may involve the UE 701 b using WLAN radio resources (e.g., connection 707) via IPsec protocol tunneling to authenticate and encrypt packets (e.g., IP packets) sent over the connection 707. IPsec tunneling can include encapsulating the entirety of original IP packets and adding a new packet header, thereby protecting the original header of the IP packets.

The RAN 710 can include one or more AN nodes or RAN nodes 711 a and 711 b (collectively referred to as “RAN nodes 711” or “RAN node 711”) that enable the connections 703 and 704. As used herein, the terms “access node,” “access point,” or the like may describe equipment that provides the radio baseband functions for data and/or voice connectivity between a network and one or more users. These access nodes can be referred to as BS, gNB s, RAN nodes, eNB s, NodeBs, RSUs, TRxPs or TRPs, and so forth, and can comprise ground stations (e.g., terrestrial access points) or satellite stations providing coverage within a geographic area (e.g., a cell). As used herein, the term “NG RAN node” or the like may refer to a RAN node 711 that operates in an NR or 5G system 700 (for example, a gNB), and the term “E-UTRAN node” or the like may refer to a RAN node 711 that operates in an LTE or 4G system 700 (e.g., an eNB). In accordance with various embodiments, the RAN nodes 711 can be implemented as one or more of a dedicated physical device such as a macrocell base station, and/or a low power (LP) base station for providing femtocells, picocells or other like cells having smaller coverage areas, smaller user capacity, or higher bandwidth compared to macrocells.

In some embodiments, all or parts of the RAN nodes 711 can be implemented as one or more software entities running on server computers as part of a virtual network, which may be referred to as a CRAN and/or a virtual baseband unit pool (vBBUP). In these embodiments, the CRAN or vBBUP may implement a RAN function split, such as a PDCP split wherein RRC and PDCP layers are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and other L2 protocol entities are operated by individual RAN nodes 711; a MAC/PHY split wherein RRC, PDCP, RLC, and MAC layers are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and the PHY layer is operated by individual RAN nodes 711; or a “lower PHY” split wherein RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC layers and upper portions of the PHY layer are operated by the CRAN/vBBUP and lower portions of the PHY layer are operated by individual RAN nodes 711. This virtualized framework allows the freed-up processor cores of the RAN nodes 711 to perform other virtualized applications. In some embodiments, an individual RAN node 711 may represent individual gNB-DUs that are connected to a gNB-CU via individual F1 interfaces (not illustrated in FIG. 7). In these implementations, the gNB-DUs can include one or more remote radio heads or RFEMs (see, for example, FIG. 10), and the gNB-CU may be operated by a server that is located in the RAN 710 (not shown) or by a server pool in a similar manner as the CRAN/vBBUP. Additionally or alternatively, one or more of the RAN nodes 711 may be next generation eNBs (ng-eNBs), which are RAN nodes that provide E-UTRA user plane and control plane protocol terminations toward the UEs 701, and are connected to a 5GC (e.g., CN 920 of FIG. 9) via an NG interface (discussed infra).

In V2X scenarios, one or more of the RAN nodes 711 may be or act as RSUs. The term “Road Side Unit” or “RSU” may refer to any transportation infrastructure entity used for V2X communications. An RSU can be implemented in or by a suitable RAN node or a stationary (or relatively stationary) UE, where an RSU implemented in or by a UE may be referred to as a “UE-type RSU,” an RSU implemented in or by an eNB may be referred to as an “eNB-type RSU,” an RSU implemented in or by a gNB may be referred to as a “gNB-type RSU,” and the like. In one example, an RSU is a computing device coupled with radio frequency circuitry located on a roadside that provides connectivity support to passing vehicle UEs 701 (vUEs 701). The RSU may also include internal data storage circuitry to store intersection map geometry, traffic statistics, media, as well as applications/software to sense and control ongoing vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The RSU may operate on the 5.9 GHz Direct Short Range Communications (DSRC) band to provide very low latency communications required for high speed events, such as crash avoidance, traffic warnings, and the like. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may operate on the cellular V2X band to provide the aforementioned low latency communications, as well as other cellular communications services. Additionally or alternatively, the RSU may operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot (2.4 GHz band) and/or provide connectivity to one or more cellular networks to provide uplink and downlink communications. The computing device(s) and some or all of the radiofrequency circuitry of the RSU may be packaged in a weatherproof enclosure suitable for outdoor installation, and can include a network interface controller to provide a wired connection (e.g., Ethernet) to a traffic signal controller and/or a backhaul network.

Any of the RAN nodes 711 can terminate the air interface protocol and can be the first point of contact for the UEs 701. In some embodiments, any of the RAN nodes 711 can fulfill various logical functions for the RAN 710 including, but not limited to, radio network controller (RNC) functions such as radio bearer management, uplink and downlink dynamic radio resource management and data packet scheduling, and mobility management.

In some embodiments, the UEs 701 can be configured to communicate using OFDM communication signals with each other or with any of the RAN nodes 711 over a multicarrier communication channel in accordance with various communication techniques, such as, but not limited to, an OFDMA communication technique (e.g., for downlink communications) or a SC-FDMA communication technique (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communications), although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. The OFDM signals can comprise a plurality of orthogonal subcarriers.

In some embodiments, a downlink resource grid can be used for downlink transmissions from any of the RAN nodes 711 to the UEs 701, while uplink transmissions can utilize similar techniques. The grid can be a time-frequency grid, called a resource grid or time-frequency resource grid, which is the physical resource in the downlink in each slot. Such a time-frequency plane representation is a common practice for OFDM systems, which makes it intuitive for radio resource allocation. Each column and each row of the resource grid corresponds to one OFDM symbol and one OFDM subcarrier, respectively. The duration of the resource grid in the time domain corresponds to one slot in a radio frame. The smallest time-frequency unit in a resource grid is denoted as a resource element. Each resource grid comprises a number of resource blocks, which describe the mapping of certain physical channels to resource elements. Each resource block comprises a collection of resource elements; in the frequency domain, this may represent the smallest quantity of resources that currently can be allocated. There are several different physical downlink channels that are conveyed using such resource blocks.

In accordance with various embodiments, the UEs 701 and the RAN nodes 711 communicate data (for example, transmit and receive) data over a licensed medium (also referred to as the “licensed spectrum” and/or the “licensed band”) and an unlicensed shared medium (also referred to as the “unlicensed spectrum” and/or the “unlicensed band”). The licensed spectrum can include channels that operate in the frequency range of approximately 400 MHz to approximately 3.8 GHz, whereas the unlicensed spectrum can include the 5 GHz band.

To operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the UEs 701 and the RAN nodes 711 may operate using LAA, eLAA, and/or feLAA mechanisms. In these implementations, the UEs 701 and the RAN nodes 711 may perform one or more known medium-sensing operations and/or carrier-sensing operations in order to determine whether one or more channels in the unlicensed spectrum is unavailable or otherwise occupied prior to transmitting in the unlicensed spectrum. The medium/carrier sensing operations may be performed according to a listen-before-talk (LBT) protocol.

LBT is a mechanism whereby equipment (for example, UEs 701, RAN nodes 711, etc.) senses a medium (for example, a channel or carrier frequency) and transmits when the medium is sensed to be idle (or when a specific channel in the medium is sensed to be unoccupied). The medium sensing operation can include CCA, which utilizes at least ED to determine the presence or absence of other signals on a channel in order to determine if a channel is occupied or clear. This LBT mechanism allows cellular/LAA networks to coexist with incumbent systems in the unlicensed spectrum and with other LAA networks. ED can include sensing RF energy across an intended transmission band for a period of time and comparing the sensed RF energy to a predefined or configured threshold.

Typically, the incumbent systems in the 5 GHz band are WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 technologies. WLAN employs a contention-based channel access mechanism, called CSMA/CA. Here, when a WLAN node (e.g., a mobile station (MS) such as UE 701, AP 706, or the like) intends to transmit, the WLAN node may first perform CCA before transmission. Additionally, a backoff mechanism is used to avoid collisions in situations where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time. The backoff mechanism may be a counter that is drawn randomly within the CWS, which is increased exponentially upon the occurrence of collision and reset to a minimum value when the transmission succeeds. The LBT mechanism designed for LAA is somewhat similar to the CSMA/CA of WLAN. In some embodiments, the LBT procedure for DL or UL transmission bursts including PDSCH or PUSCH transmissions, respectively, may have an LAA contention window that is variable in length between X and Y ECCA slots, where X and Y are minimum and maximum values for the CWSs for LAA. In one example, the minimum CWS for an LAA transmission may be 9 microseconds (μs); however, the size of the CWS and a MCOT (for example, a transmission burst) may be based on governmental regulatory requirements.

The LAA mechanisms are built upon CA technologies of LTE-Advanced systems.

In CA, each aggregated carrier is referred to as a CC. A CC may have a bandwidth of 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 20 MHz and a maximum of five CCs can be aggregated, and therefore, a maximum aggregated bandwidth is 100 MHz. In FDD systems, the number of aggregated carriers can be different for DL and UL, where the number of UL CCs is equal to or lower than the number of DL component carriers. In some cases, individual CCs can have a different bandwidth than other CCs. In TDD systems, the number of CCs as well as the bandwidths of each CC is usually the same for DL and UL.

CA also comprises individual serving cells to provide individual CCs. The coverage of the serving cells may differ, for example, because CCs on different frequency bands will experience different pathloss. A primary service cell or PCell provides a PCC for both UL and DL, and handles RRC and NAS related activities. The other serving cells are referred to as SCells, and each SCell provides an individual SCC for both UL and DL. The SCCs may be added and removed as required, while changing the PCC may require the UE 701 to undergo a handover. In LAA, eLAA, and feLAA, some or all of the SCells may operate in the unlicensed spectrum (referred to as “LAA SCells”), and the LAA SCells are assisted by a PCell operating in the licensed spectrum. When a UE is configured with more than one LAA SCell, the UE may receive UL grants on the configured LAA SCells indicating different PUSCH starting positions within a same subframe.

The PDSCH carries user data and higher-layer signaling to the UEs 701. The PDCCH carries information about the transport format and resource allocations related to the PDSCH channel, among other things. It may also inform the UEs 701 about the transport format, resource allocation, and HARQ information related to the uplink shared channel. Typically, downlink scheduling (assigning control and shared channel resource blocks to the UE 701 b within a cell) may be performed at any of the RAN nodes 711 based on channel quality information fed back from any of the UEs 701. The downlink resource assignment information may be sent on the PDCCH used for (e.g., assigned to) each of the UEs 701.

The PDCCH uses CCEs to convey the control information. Before being mapped to resource elements, the PDCCH complex-valued symbols may first be organized into quadruplets, which may then be permuted using a sub-block interleaver for rate matching. Each PDCCH may be transmitted using one or more of these CCEs, where each CCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as REGs. Four Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) symbols may be mapped to each REG. The PDCCH can be transmitted using one or more CCEs, depending on the size of the DCI and the channel condition. There can be four or more different PDCCH formats defined in LTE with different numbers of CCEs (e.g., aggregation level, L=1, 2, 4, or 8).

Some embodiments may use concepts for resource allocation for control channel information that are an extension of the above-described concepts. For example, some embodiments may utilize an EPDCCH that uses PDSCH resources for control information transmission. The EPDCCH may be transmitted using one or more ECCEs. Similar to above, each ECCE may correspond to nine sets of four physical resource elements known as an EREGs. An ECCE may have other numbers of EREGs in some situations.

The RAN nodes 711 can be configured to communicate with one another via interface 712. In some embodiments where the system 700 is an LTE system (e.g., when CN 720 is an EPC 820 as in FIG. 8), the interface 712 may be an X2 interface 712. The X2 interface may be defined between two or more RAN nodes 711 (e.g., two or more eNBs and the like) that connect to EPC 720, and/or between two eNBs connecting to EPC 720. In some embodiments, the X2 interface can include an X2 user plane interface (X2-U) and an X2 control plane interface (X2-C). The X2-U provides flow control mechanisms for user data packets transferred over the X2 interface, and may be used to communicate information about the delivery of user data between eNBs. For example, the X2-U provides specific sequence number information for user data transferred from a MeNB to an SeNB; information about successful in sequence delivery of PDCP PDUs to a UE 701 from an SeNB for user data; information of PDCP PDUs that were not delivered to a UE 701; information about a current minimum desired buffer size at the SeNB for transmitting to the UE user data; and the like. The X2-C provides intra-LTE access mobility functionality, including context transfers from source to target eNBs, user plane transport control, etc.; load management functionality; as well as inter-cell interference coordination functionality.

In some embodiments where the system 700 is a 5G or NR system (e.g., when CN 720 is an 5GC 920 as in FIG. 9), the interface 712 may be an Xn interface 712. The Xn interface is defined between two or more RAN nodes 711 (e.g., two or more Next Generation NodeBs (gNBs) and the like) that connect to 5GC 720, between a RAN node 711 (e.g., a gNB) connecting to 5GC 720 and an evolved NodeB (eNB), and/or between two eNBs connecting to 5GC 720. In some embodiments, the Xn interface can include an Xn user plane (Xn-U) interface and an Xn control plane (Xn-C) interface. The Xn-U provides non-guaranteed delivery of user plane Protocol Data Units (PDUs) and support/provide data forwarding and flow control functionality. The Xn-C provides management and error handling functionality, functionality to manage the Xn-C interface; mobility support for UE 701 in a connected mode (e.g., CM-CONNECTED) including functionality to manage the UE mobility for connected mode between one or more RAN nodes 711. The mobility support can include context transfer from an old (source) serving RAN node 711 to new (target) serving RAN node 711; and control of user plane tunnels between old (source) serving RAN node 711 to new (target) serving RAN node 711. A protocol stack of the Xn-U can include a transport network layer built on Internet Protocol (IP) transport layer, and a GPRS Tunnelling Protocol for User Plane (GTP-U) layer on top of a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and/or IP layer(s) to carry user plane PDUs. The Xn-C protocol stack can include an application layer signaling protocol (referred to as Xn Application Protocol (Xn-AP)) and a transport network layer that is built on Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). The SCTP may be on top of an IP layer, and provides the guaranteed delivery of application layer messages. In the transport IP layer, point-to-point transmission is used to deliver the signaling PDUs. In other implementations, the Xn-U protocol stack and/or the Xn-C protocol stack may be same or similar to the user plane and/or control plane protocol stack(s) shown and described herein.

The RAN 710 is shown to be communicatively coupled to a core network—in this embodiment, core network (CN) 720. The CN 720 may comprise a plurality of network elements 722, which are configured to offer various data and telecommunications services to customers/subscribers (e.g., users of UEs 701) who are connected to the CN 720 via the RAN 710. The components of the CN 720 can be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes including components to read and execute instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some embodiments, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) may be utilized to virtualize any or all of the above-described network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage mediums (described in further detail below). A logical instantiation of the CN 720 may be referred to as a network slice, and a logical instantiation of a portion of the CN 720 may be referred to as a network sub-slice. NFV architectures and infrastructures may be used to virtualize one or more network functions, alternatively performed by proprietary hardware, onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches. In other words, NFV systems can be used to execute virtual or reconfigurable implementations of one or more EPC components/functions.

Generally, the application server 730 may be an element offering applications that use IP bearer resources with the core network (e.g., Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) Packet Services (PS) domain, LTE PS data services, etc.). The application server 730 can also be configured to support one or more communication services (e.g., VoIP sessions, PTT sessions, group communication sessions, social networking services, etc.) for the UEs 701 via the CN 720.

In some embodiments, the CN 720 may be a 5GC (referred to as “5GC 720” or the like), and the RAN 710 may be connected with the CN 720 via an NG interface 713. In some embodiments, the NG interface 713 may be split into two parts, an NG user plane (NG-U) interface 714, which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes 711 and a UPF, and the S1 control plane (NG-C) interface 715, which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes 711 and AMFs. Embodiments where the CN 720 is a 5GC 720 are discussed in more detail with regard to FIG. 9.

In some embodiments, the CN 720 may be a 5G CN (referred to as “5GC 720” or the like), while in other embodiments, the CN 720 may be an EPC). Where CN 720 is an EPC (referred to as “EPC 720” or the like), the RAN 710 may be connected with the CN 720 via an S1 interface 713. In some embodiments, the S1 interface 713 may be split into two parts, an S1 user plane (S1-U) interface 714, which carries traffic data between the RAN nodes 711 and the S-GW, and the S1-MME interface 715, which is a signaling interface between the RAN nodes 711 and MMEs. An example architecture wherein the CN 720 is an EPC 720 is illustrated in FIG. 8.

Exemplary Architectures

FIG. 8 illustrates an example architecture of a system 800 including a first CN 820 in accordance with various embodiments. In this example, system 800 may implement the LTE standard wherein the CN 820 is an EPC 820 that corresponds with CN 720 of FIG. 7. Additionally, the UE 801 may be the same or similar as the UEs 701 of FIG. 7, and the E-UTRAN 810 may be a RAN that is the same or similar to the RAN 710 of FIG. 7, and which can include RAN nodes 711 discussed previously. The CN 820 may comprise Mobility Management Entities (MMEs) 821, a Serving Gateway (S-GW) 822, a PDN Gateway (P-GW) 823, a Home Subscriber Server (HSS) 824, and a Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) 825.

The MMEs 821 may be similar in function to the control plane of legacy SGSN, and may implement Mobility Management (MM) functions to keep track of the current location of a UE 801. The MMEs 821 may perform various MM procedures to manage mobility aspects in access such as gateway selection and tracking area list management. MM (also referred to as “EPS MM” or “EMM” in E-UTRAN systems) may refer to all applicable procedures, methods, data storage, etc. that are used to maintain knowledge about a present location of the UE 801, provide user identity confidentiality, and/or perform other like services to users/subscribers. Each UE 801 and the MME 821 can include an MM or EMM sublayer, and an MM context may be established in the UE 801 and the MME 821 when an attach procedure is successfully completed. The MM context may be a data structure or database object that stores MM-related information of the UE 801. The MMEs 821 may be coupled with the HSS 824 via an Sha reference point, coupled with the SGSN 825 via an S3 reference point, and coupled with the S-GW 822 via an S11 reference point.

The SGSN 825 may be a node that serves the UE 801 by tracking the location of an individual UE 801 and performing security functions. In addition, the SGSN 825 may perform Inter-EPC node signaling for mobility between 2G/3G and E-UTRAN 3GPP access networks; PDN and S-GW selection as specified by the MMEs 821; handling of UE 801 time zone functions as specified by the MMEs 821; and MME selection for handovers to E-UTRAN 3GPP access network. The S3 reference point between the MMEs 821 and the SGSN 825 may enable user and bearer information exchange for inter-3GPP access network mobility in idle and/or active states.

The HSS 824 may comprise a database for network users, including subscription-related information to support the network entities' handling of communication sessions. The EPC 820 may comprise one or several HSSs 824, depending on the number of mobile subscribers, on the capacity of the equipment, on the organization of the network, etc. For example, the HSS 824 can provide support for routing/roaming, authentication, authorization, naming/addressing resolution, location dependencies, etc. An Sha reference point between the HSS 824 and the MMEs 821 may enable transfer of subscription and authentication data for authenticating/authorizing user access to the EPC 820 between HSS 824 and the MMEs 821.

The S-GW 822 may terminate the S1 for the user plane (S1-U) interface toward the RAN 810, and routes data packets between the RAN 810 and the EPC 820. In addition, the S-GW 822 may be a local mobility anchor point for inter-RAN node handovers and also provides an anchor for inter-3GPP mobility. Other responsibilities can include lawful intercept, charging, and some policy enforcement. The S11 reference point between the S-GW 822 and the MMEs 821 provides a control plane between the MMEs 821 and the S-GW 822. The S-GW 822 may be coupled with the P-GW 823 via an S5 reference point.

The P-GW 823 may terminate an SGi interface toward a PDN 830. The P-GW 823 may route data packets between the EPC 820 and external networks such as a network including the application server 730 (alternatively referred to as an “AF”) via an IP interface 725 (see e.g., FIG. 7). In some embodiments, the P-GW 823 may be communicatively coupled to an application server (application server 730 of FIG. 7 or PDN 830 in FIG. 8) via an IP communications interface 725 (see, e.g., FIG. 7). The S5 reference point between the P-GW 823 and the S-GW 822 provides user plane tunneling and tunnel management between the P-GW 823 and the S-GW 822. The S5 reference point may also be used for S-GW 822 relocation due to UE 801 mobility and if the S-GW 822 needs to connect to a non-collocated P-GW 823 for the required PDN connectivity. The P-GW 823 may further include a node for policy enforcement and charging data collection (e.g., PCEF (not shown)). Additionally, the SGi reference point between the P-GW 823 and the packet data network (PDN) 830 may be an operator external public, a private PDN, or an intra operator packet data network, for example, for provision of IMS services. The P-GW 823 may be coupled with a PCRF 826 via a Gx reference point.

PCRF 826 is the policy and charging control element of the EPC 820. In a non-roaming scenario, there may be a single PCRF 826 in the Home Public Land Mobile Network (HPLMN) associated with a UE 801's Internet Protocol Connectivity Access Network (IP-CAN) session. In a roaming scenario with local breakout of traffic, there may be two PCRFs associated with a UE 801's IP-CAN session, a Home PCRF (H-PCRF) within an HPLMN and a Visited PCRF (V-PCRF) within a Visited Public Land Mobile Network (VPLMN). The PCRF 826 may be communicatively coupled to the application server 830 via the P-GW 823. The application server 830 may signal the PCRF 826 to indicate a new service flow and select the appropriate QoS and charging parameters. The PCRF 826 may provision this rule into a PCEF (not shown) with the appropriate TFT and QCI, which commences the QoS and charging as specified by the application server 830. The Gx reference point between the PCRF 826 and the P-GW 823 may allow for the transfer of QoS policy and charging rules from the PCRF 826 to PCEF in the P-GW 823. An Rx reference point may reside between the PDN 830 (or “AF 830”) and the PCRF 826.

FIG. 9 illustrates an architecture of a system 900 including a second CN 920 in accordance with various embodiments. The system 900 is shown to include a UE 901, which may be the same or similar to the UEs 701 and UE 801 discussed previously; a (R)AN 910, which may be the same or similar to the RAN 710 and RAN 810 discussed previously, and which can include RAN nodes 711 discussed previously; and a data network (DN) 903, which may be, for example, operator services, Internet access or 3rd party services; and a 5GC 920. The 5GC 920 can include an Authentication Server Function (AUSF) 922; an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) 921; a Session Management Function (SMF) 924; a Network Exposure Function (NEF) 923; a PCF 926; a NF Repository Function (NRF) 925; a UDM 927; an Application Function (AF) 928; a User Plane Function (UPF) 902; and a Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF) 929.

The UPF 902 may act as an anchor point for intra-RAT and inter-RAT mobility, an external PDU session point of interconnect to DN 903, and a branching point to support multi-homed PDU session. The UPF 902 may also perform packet routing and forwarding, perform packet inspection, enforce the user plane part of policy rules, lawfully intercept packets (UP collection), perform traffic usage reporting, perform QoS handling for a user plane (e.g., packet filtering, gating, UL/DL rate enforcement), perform Uplink Traffic verification (e.g., SDF to QoS flow mapping), transport level packet marking in the uplink and downlink, and perform downlink packet buffering and downlink data notification triggering. UPF 902 can include an uplink classifier to support routing traffic flows to a data network. The DN 903 may represent various network operator services, Internet access, or third party services. DN 903 can include, or be similar to, application server 730 discussed previously. The UPF 902 interacts with the SMF 924 via an N4 reference point between the SMF 924 and the UPF 902.

The AUSF 922 stores data for authentication of UE 901 and handle authentication-related functionality. The AUSF 922 may facilitate a common authentication framework for various access types. The AUSF 922 communicate with the AMF 921 via an N12 reference point between the AMF 921 and the AUSF 922; and communicate with the UDM 927 via an N13 reference point between the UDM 927 and the AUSF 922. Additionally, the AUSF 922 can exhibit an Nausf service-based interface.

The AMF 921 may be responsible for registration management (e.g., for registering UE 901, etc.), connection management, reachability management, mobility management, and lawful interception of AMF-related events, and access authentication and authorization. The AMF 921 may be a termination point for the N11 reference point between the AMF 921 and the SMF 924. The AMF 921 provides transport for Session Management (SM) messages between the UE 901 and the SMF 924, and act as a transparent pro15 for routing SM messages. AMF 921 may also provide transport for Short Message Service (SMS) messages between UE 901 and an SMS Function (SMSF) (not illustrated in FIG. 9). AMF 921 may act as a Security Anchor Function (SEAF), which can include interaction with the AUSF 922 and the UE 901, receipt of an intermediate key that was established as a result of the UE 901 authentication process. Where Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) based authentication is used, the AMF 921 may retrieve the security material from the AUSF 922. AMF 921 may also include a Security Context Management (SCM) function, which receives a key from the SEA that it uses to derive access-network specific keys. Furthermore, AMF 921 may be a termination point of a RAN CP interface, which can include or be an N2 reference point between the (R)AN 910 and the AMF 921; and the AMF 921 may be a termination point of NAS (N1) signalling, and perform NAS ciphering and integrity protection.

AMF 921 may also support NAS signalling with a UE 901 over an N3 IWF interface. The N3IWF may be used to provide access to untrusted entities. N3IWF may be a termination point for the N2 interface between the (R)AN 910 and the AMF 921 for the control plane, and may be a termination point for the N3 reference point between the (R)AN 910 and the UPF 902 for the user plane. As such, the AMF 921 handles N2 signalling from the SMF 924 and the AMF 921 for Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sessions and QoS, encapsulate/de-encapsulate packets for IPSec and N3 tunnelling, mark N3 user-plane packets in the uplink, and enforce QoS corresponding to N3 packet marking taking into account QoS requirements associated with such marking received over N2. N3IWF may also relay uplink and downlink control-plane NAS signalling between the UE 901 and AMF 921 via an N1 reference point between the UE 901 and the AMF 921, and relay uplink and downlink user-plane packets between the UE 901 and UPF 902. The N3IWF also provides mechanisms for IPsec tunnel establishment with the UE 901. The AMF 921 can exhibit an Namf service-based interface, and may be a termination point for an N14 reference point between two AMFs 921 and an N17 reference point between the AMF 921 and a 5G-EIR (not illustrated in FIG. 9).

The UE 901 may need to register with the AMF 921 in order to receive network services. Registration Management (RM) is used to register or deregister the UE 901 with the network (e.g., AMF 921), and establish a UE context in the network (e.g., AMF 921). The UE 901 may operate in an RM-REGISTERED state or an RM-DEREGISTERED state. In the RM-DEREGISTERED state, the UE 901 is not registered with the network, and the UE context in AMF 921 holds no valid location or routing information for the UE 901 so the UE 901 is not reachable by the AMF 921. In the RM-REGISTERED state, the UE 901 is registered with the network, and the UE context in AMF 921 may hold a valid location or routing information for the UE 901 so the UE 901 is reachable by the AMF 921. In the RM-REGISTERED state, the UE 901 may perform mobility Registration Update procedures, perform periodic Registration Update procedures triggered by expiration of the periodic update timer (e.g., to notify the network that the UE 901 is still active), and perform a Registration Update procedure to update UE capability information or to re-negotiate protocol parameters with the network, among others.

The AMF 921 stores one or more RM contexts for the UE 901, where each RM context is associated with a specific access to the network. The RM context may be a data structure, database object, etc. that indicates or stores, inter alia, a registration state per access type and the periodic update timer. The AMF 921 may also store a 5GC Mobility Management (MM) context that may be the same or similar to the (E)MM context discussed previously. In various embodiments, the AMF 921 stores a CE mode B Restriction parameter of the UE 901 in an associated MM context or RM context. The AMF 921 may also derive the value, when needed, from the UE's usage setting parameter already stored in the UE context (and/or MM/RM context).

Connection Management (CM) establishes and releases a signaling connection between the UE 901 and the AMF 921 over the N1 interface. The signaling connection is used to enable NAS signaling exchange between the UE 901 and the CN 920, and comprises both the signaling connection between the UE and the AN (e.g., Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection or UE-N3IWF connection for non-3GPP access) and the N2 connection for the UE 901 between the AN (e.g., RAN 910) and the AMF 921. The UE 901 may operate in one of two CM states, CM-IDLE mode or CM-CONNECTED mode. When the UE 901 is operating in the CM-IDLE state/mode, the UE 901 may have no Non-Access Stratum (NAS) signaling connection established with the AMF 921 over the N1 interface, and there may be (R)AN 910 signaling connection (e.g., N2 and/or N3 connections) for the UE 901. When the UE 901 is operating in the CM-CONNECTED state/mode, the UE 901 may have an established NAS signaling connection with the AMF 921 over the N1 interface, and there may be a (R)AN 910 signaling connection (e.g., N2 and/or N3 connections) for the UE 901. Establishment of an N2 connection between the (R)AN 910 and the AMF 921 may cause the UE 901 to transition from CM-IDLE mode to CM-CONNECTED mode, and the UE 901 may transition from the CM-CONNECTED mode to the CM-IDLE mode when N2 signaling between the (R)AN 910 and the AMF 921 is released.

The SMF 924 is responsible for Session Management (SM) (e.g., session establishment, modify and release, including tunnel maintain between UPF and AN node); UE IP address allocation and management (including optional authorization); selection and control of User Plane (UP) function; configuring traffic steering at UPF to route traffic to proper destination; termination of interfaces toward policy control functions; controlling part of policy enforcement and QoS; lawful intercept (for SM events and interface to LI system); termination of SM parts of NAS messages; downlink data notification; initiating AN specific SM information, sent via Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) over N2 to AN; and determining Session and Service Continuity (SSC) mode of a session. SM may refer to management of a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) session, and a PDU session or “session” may refer to a PDU connectivity service that provides or enables the exchange of PDUs between a UE 901 and a data network (DN) 903 identified by a Data Network Name (DNN). PDU sessions may be established upon UE 901 request, modified upon UE 901 and 5GC 920 request, and released upon UE 901 and 5GC 920 request using NAS SM signaling exchanged over the N1 reference point between the UE 901 and the SMF 924. Upon request from an application server, the 5GC 920 may trigger a specific application in the UE 901. In response to receipt of the trigger message, the UE 901 may pass the trigger message (or relevant parts/information of the trigger message) to one or more identified applications in the UE 901. The identified application(s) in the UE 901 may establish a PDU session to a specific DNN. The SMF 924 may check whether the UE 901 requests are compliant with user subscription information associated with the UE 901. In this regard, the SMF 924 may retrieve and/or request to receive update notifications on SMF 924 level subscription data from the UDM 927.

The SMF 924 can include the following roaming functionality: handling local enforcement to apply QoS SLAB (VPLMN); charging data collection and charging interface (VPLMN); lawful intercept (in VPLMN for SM events and interface to LI system); and support for interaction with external DN for transport of signalling for PDU session authorization/authentication by external DN. An N16 reference point between two SMFs 924 may be included in the system 900, which may be between another SMF 924 in a visited network and the SMF 924 in the home network in roaming scenarios. Additionally, the SMF 924 can exhibit the Nsmf service-based interface.

The NEF 923 provides means for securely exposing the services and capabilities provided by 3GPP network functions for third party, internal exposure/re-exposure, Application Functions (e.g., AF 928), edge computing or fog computing systems, etc. In such embodiments, the NEF 923 may authenticate, authorize, and/or throttle the AFs. NEF 923 may also translate information exchanged with the AF 928 and information exchanged with internal network functions. For example, the NEF 923 may translate between an AF-Service-Identifier and an internal 5GC information. NEF 923 may also receive information from other network functions (NFs) based on exposed capabilities of other network functions. This information may be stored at the NEF 923 as structured data, or at a data storage NF using standardized interfaces. The stored information can then be re-exposed by the NEF 923 to other NFs and AFs, and/or used for other purposes such as analytics. Additionally, the NEF 923 can exhibit an Nnef service-based interface.

The NRF 925 supports service discovery functions, receive Network Function (NF) discovery requests from NF instances, and provide the information of the discovered NF instances to the NF instances. NRF 925 also maintains information of available NF instances and their supported services. As used herein, the terms “instantiate,” “instantiation,” and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and an “instance” may refer to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. Additionally, the NRF 925 can exhibit the Nnrf service-based interface.

The PCF 926 provides policy rules to control plane function(s) to enforce them, and may also support unified policy framework to govern network behaviour. The PCF 926 may also be implemented an Front End (FE) to access subscription information relevant for policy decisions in a UDR of the UDM 927. The PCF 926 communicate with the AMF 921 via an N15 reference point between the PCF 926 and the AMF 921, which can include a PCF 926 in a visited network and the AMF 921 in case of roaming scenarios. The PCF 926 communicate with the AF 928 via an N5 reference point between the PCF 926 and the AF 928; and with the SMF 924 via an N7 reference point between the PCF 926 and the SMF 924. The system 900 and/or CN 920 may also include an N24 reference point between the PCF 926 (in the home network) and a PCF 926 in a visited network. Additionally, the PCF 926 can exhibit an Npcf service-based interface.

The UDM 927 handles subscription-related information to support the network entities' handling of communication sessions, and stores subscription data of UE 901. For example, subscription data may be communicated between the UDM 927 and the AMF 921 via an N8 reference point between the UDM 927 and the AMF. The UDM 927 can include two parts, an application Front End (FE) and a UDR (the FE and UDR are not illustrated in FIG. 9). The UDR stores subscription data and policy data for the UDM 927 and the PCF 926, and/or structured data for exposure and application data (including PFDs for application detection, application request information for multiple UEs 901) for the NEF 923. The Nudr service-based interface may be exhibited by the UDR 221 to allow the UDM 927, PCF 926, and NEF 923 to access a particular set of the stored data, as well as to read, update (e.g., add, modify), delete, and subscribe to notification of relevant data changes in the UDR. The UDM can include a UDM-FE, which is in charge of processing credentials, location management, subscription management and so on. Several different front ends can serve the same user in different transactions. The UDM-FE accesses subscription information stored in the UDR and performs authentication credential processing, user identification handling, access authorization, registration/mobility management, and subscription management. The UDR interacts with the SMF 924 via an N10 reference point between the UDM 927 and the SMF 924. UDM 927 may also support SMS management, wherein an SMS-FE implements the similar application logic as discussed previously. Additionally, the UDM 927 can exhibit the Nudm service-based interface.

The AF 928 provides application influence on traffic routing, provide access to the NCE, and interact with the policy framework for policy control. The NCE is a mechanism that allows the 5GC 920 and AF 928 to provide information to each other via NEF 923, which may be used for edge computing implementations. In such implementations, the network operator and third party services can be hosted close to the UE 901 access point of attachment to achieve an efficient service delivery through the reduced end-to-end latency and load on the transport network. For edge computing implementations, the 5GC can select a UPF 902 close to the UE 901 and execute traffic steering from the UPF 902 to DN 903 via the N6 interface. This may be based on the UE subscription data, UE location, and information provided by the AF 928. In this way, the AF 928 influences UPF (re)selection and traffic routing. Based on operator deployment, when AF 928 is considered to be a trusted entity, the network operator permits AF 928 to interact directly with relevant NFs. Additionally, the AF 928 can exhibit an Naf service-based interface.

The NSSF 929 selects a set of network slice instances serving the UE 901. The NSSF 929 also determines allowed Network Slice Selection Assistance Information (NSSAI) and the mapping to the subscribed Single-NSSAIs (S-NSSAIs), if needed. The NSSF 929 also determines the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) set to be used to serve the UE 901, or a list of candidate AMF(s) 921 based on a suitable configuration and possibly by querying the NRF 925. The selection of a set of network slice instances for the UE 901 may be triggered by the AMF 921 with which the UE 901 is registered by interacting with the NSSF 929, which may lead to a change of AMF 921. The NSSF 929 interacts with the AMF 921 via an N22 reference point between AMF 921 and NSSF 929; and communicate with another NSSF 929 in a visited network via an N31 reference point (not illustrated in FIG. 9). Additionally, the NSSF 929 can exhibit an Nnssf service-based interface.

As discussed previously, the CN 920 can include an SMS Function (SMSF), which may be responsible for Short Message Service (SMS) subscription checking and verification, and relaying SM messages to/from the UE 901 to/from other entities, such as an SMS-GMSC/IWMSC/SMS-router. The SMS also interacts with AMF 921 and UDM 927 for a notification procedure that the UE 901 is available for SMS transfer (e.g., set a UE not reachable flag, and notifying UDM 927 when UE 901 is available for SMS).

The CN 120 may also include other elements that are not illustrated in FIG. 9, such as a Data Storage system/architecture, a 5G-Equipment Identity Register (EIR), a Security Edge Protection Pro15 (SEPP), and the like. The Data Storage system can include a Structured Data Storage Function (SDSF), an Unstructured Data Storage Network Function (UDSF), and/or the like. Any Network Function (NF) stores and retrieve unstructured data into/from the UDSF (e.g., UE contexts), via N18 reference point between any NF and the UDSF (not illustrated in FIG. 9). Individual NFs may share a UDSF for storing their respective unstructured data or individual NFs may each have their own UDSF located at or near the individual NFs. Additionally, the UDSF can exhibit an Nudsf service-based interface (not illustrated in FIG. 9). The 5G-EIR may be an NF that checks the status of PEI for determining whether particular equipment/entities are blacklisted from the network; and the SEPP may be a non-transparent pro15 that performs topology hiding, message filtering, and policing on inter-Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) control plane interfaces.

Additionally, there may be many more reference points and/or service-based interfaces between the NF services in the NFs; however, these interfaces and reference points have been omitted from FIG. 9 for clarity. In one example, the CN 920 can include an Nx interface, which is an inter-CN interface between the MME (e.g., MME 821) and the AMF 921 in order to enable interworking between CN 920 and CN 820. Other example interfaces/reference points can include an N5g-EIR service-based interface exhibited by a 5G-EIR, an N27 reference point between the NF Repository Function (NRF) in the visited network and the NRF in the home network; and an N31 reference point between the Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF) in the visited network and the NSSF in the home network.

Exemplary Infrastructure Equipment

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of infrastructure equipment 1000 in accordance with various embodiments. The infrastructure equipment 1000 (or “system 1000”) can be implemented as a base station, radio head, RAN node such as the RAN nodes 711 and/or AP 706 shown and described previously, application server(s) 730, and/or any other element/device discussed herein. In other examples, the system 1000 could be implemented in or by a UE.

The system 1000 includes application circuitry 1005, baseband circuitry 1010, one or more radio front end modules (RFEMs) 1015, memory circuitry 1020, power management integrated circuitry (PMIC) 1025, power tee circuitry 1030, network controller circuitry 1035, network interface connector 1040, satellite positioning circuitry 1045, and user interface 1050. In some embodiments, the device 1000 can include additional elements such as, for example, memory/storage, display, camera, sensor, or input/output (I/O) interface. In other embodiments, the components described below may be included in more than one device. For example, said circuitries may be separately included in more than one device for Cloud Radio Access Network (CRAN), vBBU, or other like implementations.

Application circuitry 1005 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, and one or more of low drop-out voltage regulators (LDOs), interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I²C or universal programmable serial interface module, real time clock (RTC), timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose input/output (I/O or IO), memory card controllers such as Secure Digital (SD) MultiMediaCard (MMC) or similar, Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces, Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) interfaces and Joint Test Access Group (JTAG) test access ports. The processors (or cores) of the application circuitry 1005 may be coupled with or can include memory/storage elements and can be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system 1000. In some embodiments, the memory/storage elements may be on-chip memory circuitry, which can include any suitable volatile and/or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, solid-state memory, and/or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein.

The processor(s) of application circuitry 1005 can include, for example, one or more processor cores (CPUs), one or more application processors, one or more graphics processing units (GPUs), one or more reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, one or more Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, one or more complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, one or more digital signal processors (DSP), one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, or any suitable combination thereof. In some embodiments, the application circuitry 1005 may comprise, or may be, a special-purpose processor/controller to operate according to the various embodiments herein. As examples, the processor(s) of application circuitry 1005 can include one or more Intel Pentium®, Core®, or Xeon® processor(s); Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Ryzen® processor(s), Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), or Epyc® processors; ARM-based processor(s) licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd. such as the ARM Cortex-A family of processors and the ThunderX2® provided by Cavium™, Inc.; a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc. such as MIPS Warrior P-class processors; and/or the like. In some embodiments, the system 1000 may not utilize application circuitry 1005, and instead can include a special-purpose processor/controller to process IP data received from an EPC or SGC, for example.

In some embodiments, the application circuitry 1005 can include one or more hardware accelerators, which may be microprocessors, programmable processing devices, or the like. The one or more hardware accelerators can include, for example, computer vision (CV) and/or deep learning (DL) accelerators. As examples, the programmable processing devices may be one or more a field-programmable devices (FPDs) such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and the like; programmable logic devices (PLDs) such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); and the like. In such implementations, the circuitry of application circuitry 1005 may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric, and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry 1005 can include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuses, etc.)) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in look-up-tables (LUTs) and the like.

The baseband circuitry 1010 can be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. The various hardware electronic elements of baseband circuitry 1010 are to be discussed below with regard to FIG. 12.

User interface circuitry 1050 can include one or more user interfaces designed to enable user interaction with the system 1000 or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral component interaction with the system 1000. User interfaces can include, but are not limited to, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), one or more indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)), a physical keyboard or keypad, a mouse, a touchpad, a touchscreen, speakers or other audio emitting devices, microphones, a printer, a scanner, a headset, a display screen or display device, etc. Peripheral component interfaces can include, but are not limited to, a nonvolatile memory port, a universal serial bus (USB) port, an audio jack, a power supply interface, etc.

The radio front end modules (RFEMs) 1015 may comprise a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-mmWave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some embodiments, the one or more sub-mmWave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFICs can include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see e.g., antenna array 1211 of FIG. 12 infra), and the RFEM may be connected to multiple antennas. In alternative implementations, both mmWave and sub-mmWave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 1015, which incorporates both mmWave antennas and sub-mmWave.

The memory circuitry 1020 can include one or more of volatile memory including dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and/or synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), and nonvolatile memory (NVM) including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as Flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc., and may incorporate the three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®. Memory circuitry 1020 can be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, socketed memory modules and plug-in memory cards.

The PMIC 1025 can include voltage regulators, surge protectors, power alarm detection circuitry, and one or more backup power sources such as a battery or capacitor. The power alarm detection circuitry may detect one or more of brown out (under-voltage) and surge (over-voltage) conditions. The power tee circuitry 1030 provides for electrical power drawn from a network cable to provide both power supply and data connectivity to the infrastructure equipment 1000 using a single cable.

The network controller circuitry 1035 provides connectivity to a network using a standard network interface protocol such as Ethernet, Ethernet over GRE Tunnels, Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), or some other suitable protocol. Network connectivity may be provided to/from the infrastructure equipment 1000 via network interface connector 1040 using a physical connection, which may be electrical (commonly referred to as a “copper interconnect”), optical, or wireless. The network controller circuitry 1035 can include one or more dedicated processors and/or FPGAs to communicate using one or more of the aforementioned protocols. In some embodiments, the network controller circuitry 1035 can include multiple controllers to provide connectivity to other networks using the same or different protocols.

The positioning circuitry 1045 includes circuitry to receive and decode signals transmitted/broadcasted by a positioning network of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) include United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation System (GLONASS), the European Union's Galileo system, China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, a regional navigation system or GNSS augmentation system (e.g., Navigation with Indian Constellation (NAVIC), Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), France's Doppler Orbitography and Radio-positioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS), etc.), or the like. The positioning circuitry 1045 comprises various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, and the like to facilitate OTA communications) to communicate with components of a positioning network, such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuitry 1045 can include a Micro-Technology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (Micro-PNT) IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking/estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuitry 1045 may also be part of, or interact with, the baseband circuitry 1010 and/or RFEMs 1015 to communicate with the nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuitry 1045 may also provide position data and/or time data to the application circuitry 1005, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (e.g., RAN nodes 711, etc.), or the like.

The components illustrated in FIG. 10 communicate with one another using interface circuitry, which can include any number of bus and/or interconnect (IX) technologies such as industry standard architecture (ISA), extended ISA (EISA), peripheral component interconnect (PCI), peripheral component interconnect extended (PCIx), PCI express (PCIe), or any number of other technologies. The bus/IX may be a proprietary bus, for example, used in a System on Chip (SoC) based system. Other bus/IX systems may be included, such as an I²C interface, an SPI interface, point to point interfaces, and a power bus, among others.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of a platform 1100 (or “device 1100”) in accordance with various embodiments. In some embodiments, the computer platform 1100 may be suitable for use as UEs 701, 801, application servers 730, and/or any other element/device discussed herein. The platform 1100 can include any combinations of the components shown in the example. The components of platform 1100 can be implemented as integrated circuits (ICs), portions thereof, discrete electronic devices, or other modules, logic, hardware, software, firmware, or a combination thereof adapted in the computer platform 1100, or as components otherwise incorporated within a chassis of a larger system. The block diagram of FIG. 11 is intended to show a high level view of components of the computer platform 1100. However, some of the components shown may be omitted, additional components may be present, and different arrangement of the components shown may occur in other implementations.

Application circuitry 1105 includes circuitry such as, but not limited to one or more processors (or processor cores), cache memory, and one or more of LDOs, interrupt controllers, serial interfaces such as SPI, I²C or universal programmable serial interface module, RTC, timer-counters including interval and watchdog timers, general purpose I/O, memory card controllers such as SD MMC or similar, USB interfaces, MIPI interfaces, and JTAG test access ports. The processors (or cores) of the application circuitry 1105 may be coupled with or can include memory/storage elements and can be configured to execute instructions stored in the memory/storage to enable various applications or operating systems to run on the system 1100. In some embodiments, the memory/storage elements may be on-chip memory circuitry, which can include any suitable volatile and/or non-volatile memory, such as DRAM, SRAM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, solid-state memory, and/or any other type of memory device technology, such as those discussed herein.

The processor(s) of application circuitry 1105 can include, for example, one or more processor cores, one or more application processors, one or more GPUs, one or more RISC processors, one or more ARM processors, one or more CISC processors, one or more DSP, one or more FPGAs, one or more PLDs, one or more ASICs, one or more microprocessors or controllers, a multithreaded processor, an ultra-low voltage processor, an embedded processor, some other known processing element, or any suitable combination thereof. In some embodiments, the application circuitry 1105 may comprise, or may be, a special-purpose processor/controller to operate according to the various embodiments herein.

As examples, the processor(s) of application circuitry 1105 can include an Intel® Architecture Core™ based processor, such as a Quark™, an Atom™, an i3, an i5, an i7, or an MCU-class processor, or another such processor available from Intel® Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. The processors of the application circuitry 1105 may also be one or more of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Ryzen® processor(s) or Accelerated Processing Units (APUs); A5-A9 processor(s) from Apple® Inc., Snapdragon™ processor(s) from Qualcomm® Technologies, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc.® Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP)™ processor(s); a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc. such as MIPS Warrior M-class, Warrior I-class, and Warrior P-class processors; an ARM-based design licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd., such as the ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M family of processors; or the like. In some embodiments, the application circuitry 1105 may be a part of a system on a chip (SoC) in which the application circuitry 1105 and other components are formed into a single integrated circuit, or a single package, such as the Edison™ or Galileo™ SoC boards from Intel® Corporation.

Additionally or alternatively, application circuitry 1105 can include circuitry such as, but not limited to, one or more a field-programmable devices (FPDs) such as FPGAs and the like; programmable logic devices (PLDs) such as complex PLDs (CPLDs), high-capacity PLDs (HCPLDs), and the like; ASICs such as structured ASICs and the like; programmable SoCs (PSoCs); and the like. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry 1105 may comprise logic blocks or logic fabric, and other interconnected resources that may be programmed to perform various functions, such as the procedures, methods, functions, etc. of the various embodiments discussed herein. In such embodiments, the circuitry of application circuitry 1105 can include memory cells (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), flash memory, static memory (e.g., static random access memory (SRAM), anti-fuses, etc.)) used to store logic blocks, logic fabric, data, etc. in look-up tables (LUTs) and the like.

The baseband circuitry 1110 can be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits, a single packaged integrated circuit soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more integrated circuits. The various hardware electronic elements of baseband circuitry 1110 are discussed infra with regard to FIG. 12.

The RFEMs 1115 may comprise a millimeter wave (mmWave) RFEM and one or more sub-mmWave radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). In some embodiments, the one or more sub-mmWave RFICs may be physically separated from the mmWave RFEM. The RFICs can include connections to one or more antennas or antenna arrays (see e.g., antenna array 1211 of FIG. 12 infra), and the RFEM may be connected to multiple antennas. In alternative implementations, both mmWave and sub-mmWave radio functions can be implemented in the same physical RFEM 1115, which incorporates both mmWave antennas and sub-mmWave.

The memory circuitry 1120 can include any number and type of memory devices used to provide for a given amount of system memory. As examples, the memory circuitry 1120 can include one or more of volatile memory including random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM) and/or synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), and nonvolatile memory (NVM) including high-speed electrically erasable memory (commonly referred to as Flash memory), phase change random access memory (PRAM), magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), etc. The memory circuitry 1120 may be developed in accordance with a Joint Electron Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) low power double data rate (LPDDR)-based design, such as LPDDR2, LPDDR3, LPDDR4, or the like. Memory circuitry 1120 can be implemented as one or more of solder down packaged integrated circuits, single die package (SDP), dual die package (DDP) or quad die package (Q17P), socketed memory modules, dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) including microDIMMs or MiniDIMMs, and/or soldered onto a motherboard via a ball grid array (BGA). In low power implementations, the memory circuitry 1120 may be on-die memory or registers associated with the application circuitry 1105. To provide for persistent storage of information such as data, applications, operating systems and so forth, memory circuitry 1120 can include one or more mass storage devices, which can include, inter alia, a solid state disk drive (SSDD), hard disk drive (HDD), a micro HDD, resistance change memories, phase change memories, holographic memories, or chemical memories, among others. For example, the computer platform 1100 may incorporate the three-dimensional (3D) cross-point (XPOINT) memories from Intel® and Micron®.

Removable memory circuitry 1123 can include devices, circuitry, enclosures/housings, ports or receptacles, etc. used to couple portable data storage devices with the platform 1100. These portable data storage devices may be used for mass storage purposes, and can include, for example, flash memory cards (e.g., Secure Digital (SD) cards, microSD cards, xD picture cards, and the like), and USB flash drives, optical discs, external HDDs, and the like.

The platform 1100 can also include interface circuitry (not shown) that is used to connect external devices with the platform 1100. The external devices connected to the platform 1100 via the interface circuitry include sensor circuitry 1121 and electro-mechanical components (EMCs) 1122, as well as removable memory devices coupled to removable memory circuitry 1123.

The sensor circuitry 1121 includes devices, modules, or subsystems whose purpose is to detect events or changes in its environment and send the information (sensor data) about the detected events to some other a device, module, subsystem, etc. Examples of such sensors include, inter alia, inertia measurement units (IMUs) comprising accelerometers, gyroscopes, and/or magnetometers; microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) or nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) comprising 3-axis accelerometers, 3-axis gyroscopes, and/or magnetometers; level sensors; flow sensors; temperature sensors (e.g., thermistors); pressure sensors; barometric pressure sensors; gravimeters; altimeters; image capture devices (e.g., cameras or lensless apertures); light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors; proximity sensors (e.g., infrared radiation detector and the like), depth sensors, ambient light sensors, ultrasonic transceivers; microphones or other like audio capture devices; etc.

EMCs 1122 include devices, modules, or subsystems whose purpose is to enable platform 1100 to change its state, position, and/or orientation, or move or control a mechanism or (sub)system. Additionally, EMCs 1122 can be configured to generate and send messages/signalling to other components of the platform 1100 to indicate a current state of the EMCs 1122. Examples of the EMCs 1122 include one or more power switches, relays including electromechanical relays (EMRs) and/or solid state relays (SSRs), actuators (e.g., valve actuators, etc.), an audible sound generator, a visual warning device, motors (e.g., DC motors, stepper motors, etc.), wheels, thrusters, propellers, claws, clamps, hooks, and/or other like electro-mechanical components. In some embodiments, platform 1100 is configured to operate one or more EMCs 1122 based on one or more captured events and/or instructions or control signals received from a service provider and/or various clients.

In some embodiments, the interface circuitry connects the platform 1100 with positioning circuitry 1145. The positioning circuitry 1145 includes circuitry to receive and decode signals transmitted/broadcasted by a positioning network of a GNSS. Examples of navigation satellite constellations (or GNSS) include United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS, the European Union's Galileo system, China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, a regional navigation system or GNSS augmentation system (e.g., NAVIC), Japan's QZSS, France's DORIS, etc.), or the like. The positioning circuitry 1145 comprises various hardware elements (e.g., including hardware devices such as switches, filters, amplifiers, antenna elements, and the like to facilitate OTA communications) to communicate with components of a positioning network, such as navigation satellite constellation nodes. In some embodiments, the positioning circuitry 1145 can include a Micro-PNT IC that uses a master timing clock to perform position tracking/estimation without GNSS assistance. The positioning circuitry 1145 may also be part of, or interact with, the baseband circuitry 1110 and/or RFEMs 1115 to communicate with the nodes and components of the positioning network. The positioning circuitry 1145 may also provide position data and/or time data to the application circuitry 1105, which may use the data to synchronize operations with various infrastructure (e.g., radio base stations), for turn-by-turn navigation applications, or the like

In some embodiments, the interface circuitry connects the platform 1100 with Near-Field Communication (NFC) circuitry 1140. NFC circuitry 1140 is configured to provide contactless, short-range communications based on radio frequency identification (RFID) standards, wherein magnetic field induction is used to enable communication between NFC circuitry 1140 and NFC-enabled devices external to the platform 1100 (e.g., an “NFC touchpoint”). NFC circuitry 1140 comprises an NFC controller coupled with an antenna element and a processor coupled with the NFC controller. The NFC controller may be a chip/IC providing NFC functionalities to the NFC circuitry 1140 by executing NFC controller firmware and an NFC stack. The NFC stack may be executed by the processor to control the NFC controller, and the NFC controller firmware may be executed by the NFC controller to control the antenna element to emit short-range RF signals. The RF signals may power a passive NFC tag (e.g., a microchip embedded in a sticker or wristband) to transmit stored data to the NFC circuitry 1140, or initiate data transfer between the NFC circuitry 1140 and another active NFC device (e.g., a smartphone or an NFC-enabled POS terminal) that is proximate to the platform 1100.

The driver circuitry 1146 can include software and hardware elements that operate to control particular devices that are embedded in the platform 1100, attached to the platform 1100, or otherwise communicatively coupled with the platform 1100. The driver circuitry 1146 can include individual drivers allowing other components of the platform 1100 to interact with or control various input/output (I/O) devices that may be present within, or connected to, the platform 1100. For example, driver circuitry 1146 can include a display driver to control and allow access to a display device, a touchscreen driver to control and allow access to a touchscreen interface of the platform 1100, sensor drivers to obtain sensor readings of sensor circuitry 1121 and control and allow access to sensor circuitry 1121, EMC drivers to obtain actuator positions of the EMCs 1122 and/or control and allow access to the EMCs 1122, a camera driver to control and allow access to an embedded image capture device, audio drivers to control and allow access to one or more audio devices.

The power management integrated circuitry (PMIC) 1125 (also referred to as “power management circuitry 1125”) may manage power provided to various components of the platform 1100. In particular, with respect to the baseband circuitry 1110, the PMIC 1125 may control power-source selection, voltage scaling, battery charging, or DC-to-DC conversion. The PMIC 1125 may often be included when the platform 1100 is capable of being powered by a battery 1130, for example, when the device is included in a UE 701, 801.

In some embodiments, the PMIC 1125 may control, or otherwise be part of, various power saving mechanisms of the platform 1100. For example, if the platform 1100 is in an RRC_Connected state, where it is still connected to the RAN node as it expects to receive traffic shortly, then it may enter a state known as Discontinuous Reception Mode (DRX) after a period of inactivity. During this state, the platform 1100 may power down for brief intervals of time and thus save power. If there is no data traffic activity for an extended period of time, then the platform 1100 may transition off to an RRC_Idle state, where it disconnects from the network and does not perform operations such as channel quality feedback, handover, etc. The platform 1100 goes into a very low power state and it performs paging where again it periodically wakes up to listen to the network and then powers down again. The platform 1100 may not receive data in this state; in order to receive data, it must transition back to RRC_Connected state. An additional power saving mode may allow a device to be unavailable to the network for periods longer than a paging interval (ranging from seconds to a few hours). During this time, the device is totally unreachable to the network and may power down completely. Any data sent during this time incurs a large delay and it is assumed the delay is acceptable.

A battery 1130 may power the platform 1100, although in some examples the platform 1100 may be mounted deployed in a fixed location, and may have a power supply coupled to an electrical grid. The battery 1130 may be a lithium ion battery, a metal-air battery, such as a zinc-air battery, an aluminum-air battery, a lithium-air battery, and the like. In some embodiments, such as in V2X applications, the battery 1130 may be a typical lead-acid automotive battery.

In some embodiments, the battery 1130 can be a “smart battery,” which includes or is coupled with a Battery Management System (BMS) or battery monitoring integrated circuitry. The BMS may be included in the platform 1100 to track the state of charge (SoCh) of the battery 1130. The BMS may be used to monitor other parameters of the battery 1130 to provide failure predictions, such as the state of health (SoH) and the state of function (SoF) of the battery 1130. The BMS communicate the information of the battery 1130 to the application circuitry 1105 or other components of the platform 1100. The BMS may also include an analog-to-digital (ADC) convertor that allows the application circuitry 1105 to directly monitor the voltage of the battery 1130 or the current flow from the battery 1130. The battery parameters may be used to determine actions that the platform 1100 may perform, such as transmission frequency, network operation, sensing frequency, and the like.

A power block, or other power supply coupled to an electrical grid can be coupled with the BMS to charge the battery 1130. In some examples, the power block XS30 may be replaced with a wireless power receiver to obtain the power wirelessly, for example, through a loop antenna in the computer platform 1100. In these examples, a wireless battery charging circuit may be included in the BMS. The specific charging circuits chosen may depend on the size of the battery 1130, and thus, the current required. The charging may be performed using the Airfuel standard promulgated by the Airfuel Alliance, the Qi wireless charging standard promulgated by the Wireless Power Consortium, or the Rezence charging standard promulgated by the Alliance for Wireless Power, among others.

User interface circuitry 1150 includes various input/output (I/O) devices present within, or connected to, the platform 1100, and includes one or more user interfaces designed to enable user interaction with the platform 1100 and/or peripheral component interfaces designed to enable peripheral component interaction with the platform 1100. The user interface circuitry 1150 includes input device circuitry and output device circuitry. Input device circuitry includes any physical or virtual means for accepting an input including, inter alia, one or more physical or virtual buttons (e.g., a reset button), a physical keyboard, keypad, mouse, touchpad, touchscreen, microphones, scanner, headset, and/or the like. The output device circuitry includes any physical or virtual means for showing information or otherwise conveying information, such as sensor readings, actuator position(s), or other like information. Output device circuitry can include any number and/or combinations of audio or visual display, including, inter alia, one or more simple visual outputs/indicators (e.g., binary status indicators (e.g., light emitting diodes (LEDs)) and multi-character visual outputs, or more complex outputs such as display devices or touchscreens (e.g., Liquid Chrystal Displays (LCD), LED displays, quantum dot displays, projectors, etc.), with the output of characters, graphics, multimedia objects, and the like being generated or produced from the operation of the platform 1100. The output device circuitry may also include speakers or other audio emitting devices, printer(s), and/or the like. In some embodiments, the sensor circuitry 1121 may be used as the input device circuitry (e.g., an image capture device, motion capture device, or the like) and one or more EMCs may be used as the output device circuitry (e.g., an actuator to provide haptic feedback or the like). In another example, NFC circuitry comprising an NFC controller coupled with an antenna element and a processing device may be included to read electronic tags and/or connect with another NFC-enabled device. Peripheral component interfaces can include, but are not limited to, a non-volatile memory port, a USB port, an audio jack, a power supply interface, etc.

Although not shown, the components of platform 1100 communicate with one another using a suitable bus or interconnect (IX) technology, which can include any number of technologies, including ISA, EISA, PCI, PCIx, PCIe, a Time-Trigger Protocol (TTP) system, a FlexRay system, or any number of other technologies. The bus/IX may be a proprietary bus/IX, for example, used in a SoC based system. Other bus/IX systems may be included, such as an I²C interface, an SPI interface, point-to-point interfaces, and a power bus, among others.

Exemplary Baseband Circuitry and Radio Front End Modules

FIG. 12 illustrates example components of baseband circuitry 1210 and radio front end modules (RFEM) 1215 in accordance with various embodiments. The baseband circuitry 1210 corresponds to the baseband circuitry 1010 and 1110 of FIGS. 10 and 11, respectively. The RFEM 1215 corresponds to the RFEM 1015 and 1115 of FIGS. 10 and 11, respectively. As shown, the RFEMs 1215 can include Radio Frequency (RF) circuitry 1206, front-end module (FEM) circuitry 1208, antenna array 1211 coupled together at least as shown.

The baseband circuitry 1210 includes circuitry and/or control logic configured to carry out various radio/network protocol and radio control functions that enable communication with one or more radio networks via the RF circuitry 1206. The radio control functions can include, but are not limited to, signal modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, radio frequency shifting, etc. In some embodiments, modulation/demodulation circuitry of the baseband circuitry 1210 can include Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT), precoding, or constellation mapping/demapping functionality. In some embodiments, encoding/decoding circuitry of the baseband circuitry 1210 can include convolution, tail-biting convolution, turbo, Viterbi, or Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) encoder/decoder functionality. Embodiments of modulation/demodulation and encoder/decoder functionality are not limited to these examples and can include other suitable functionality in other embodiments. The baseband circuitry 1210 is configured to process baseband signals received from a receive signal path of the RF circuitry 1206 and to generate baseband signals for a transmit signal path of the RF circuitry 1206. The baseband circuitry 1210 is configured to interface with application circuitry 1005/1105 (for example, FIG. 10 and FIG. 11) for generation and processing of the baseband signals and for controlling operations of the RF circuitry 1206. The baseband circuitry 1210 handles various radio control functions.

The aforementioned circuitry and/or control logic of the baseband circuitry 1210 can include one or more single or multi-core processors. For example, the one or more processors can include a 3G baseband processor 1204A, a 4G/LTE baseband processor 1204B, a 5G/NR baseband processor 1204C, or some other baseband processor(s) 1204D for other existing generations, generations in development or to be developed in the future (e.g., sixth generation (6G), etc.). In other embodiments, some or all of the functionality of baseband processors 1204A-D may be included in modules stored in the memory 1204G and executed via a Central Processing Unit (CPU) 1204E. In other embodiments, some or all of the functionality of baseband processors 1204A-D may be provided as hardware accelerators (e.g., FPGAs, ASICs, etc.) loaded with the appropriate bit streams or logic blocks stored in respective memory cells. In various embodiments, the memory 1204G stores program code of a real-time OS (RTOS), which when executed by the CPU 1204E (or other baseband processor), is to cause the CPU 1204E (or other baseband processor) to manage resources of the baseband circuitry 1210, schedule tasks, etc. Examples of the RTOS can include Operating System Embedded (OSE)™ provided by Enea®, Nucleus RTOS™ provided by Mentor Graphics®, Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) provided by Mentor Graphics®, ThreadX™ provided by Express Logic®, FreeRTOS, REX OS provided by Qualcomm®, OKL4 provided by Open Kernel (OK) Labs®, or any other suitable RTOS, such as those discussed herein. In addition, the baseband circuitry 1210 includes one or more audio digital signal processor(s) (DSP) 1204F. The audio DSP(s) 1204F include elements for compression/decompression and echo cancellation and can include other suitable processing elements in other embodiments.

In some embodiments, each of the processors 1204A-1204E include respective memory interfaces to send/receive data to/from the memory 1204G. The baseband circuitry 1210 may further include one or more interfaces to communicatively couple to other circuitries/devices, such as an interface to send/receive data to/from memory external to the baseband circuitry 1210; an application circuitry interface to send/receive data to/from the application circuitry 1005/1105; an RF circuitry interface to send/receive data to/from RF circuitry 1206 of FIG. 12; a wireless hardware connectivity interface to send/receive data to/from one or more wireless hardware elements (e.g., Near Field Communication (NFC) components, Bluetooth®/Bluetooth® Low Energy components, Wi-Fi® components, and/or the like); and a power management interface to send/receive power or control signals to/from the PMIC 1125.

In alternate embodiments (which may be combined with the above described embodiments), baseband circuitry 1210 comprises one or more digital baseband systems, which are coupled with one another via an interconnect subsystem and to a CPU subsystem, an audio subsystem, and an interface subsystem. The digital baseband subsystems may also be coupled to a digital baseband interface and a mixed-signal baseband subsystem via another interconnect subsystem. Each of the interconnect subsystems can include a bus system, point-to-point connections, network-on-chip (NOC) structures, and/or some other suitable bus or interconnect technology, such as those discussed herein. The audio subsystem can include DSP circuitry, buffer memory, program memory, speech processing accelerator circuitry, data converter circuitry such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter circuitry, analog circuitry including one or more of amplifiers and filters, and/or other like components. In an aspect of the present disclosure, baseband circuitry 1210 can include protocol processing circuitry with one or more instances of control circuitry (not shown) to provide control functions for the digital baseband circuitry and/or radio frequency circuitry (e.g., the radio front end modules 1215).

Although not illustrated in FIG. 12, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 1210 includes individual processing device(s) to operate one or more wireless communication protocols (e.g., a “multi-protocol baseband processor” or “protocol processing circuitry”) and individual processing device(s) to implement PHY layer functions. In these embodiments, the PHY layer functions include the aforementioned radio control functions. In these embodiments, the protocol processing circuitry operates or implements various protocol layers/entities of one or more wireless communication protocols. In a first example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate LTE protocol entities and/or 5G/NR protocol entities when the baseband circuitry 1210 and/or RF circuitry 1206 are part of mmWave communication circuitry or some other suitable cellular communication circuitry. In the first example, the protocol processing circuitry would operate MAC, RLC, PDCP, SDAP, RRC, and NAS functions. In a second example, the protocol processing circuitry may operate one or more IEEE-based protocols when the baseband circuitry 1210 and/or RF circuitry 1206 are part of a Wi-Fi communication system. In the second example, the protocol processing circuitry would operate Wi-Fi MAC and logical link control (LLC) functions. The protocol processing circuitry can include one or more memory structures (e.g., 1204G) to store program code and data for operating the protocol functions, as well as one or more processing cores to execute the program code and perform various operations using the data. The baseband circuitry 1210 may also support radio communications for more than one wireless protocol.

The various hardware elements of the baseband circuitry 1210 discussed herein can be implemented, for example, as a solder-down substrate including one or more integrated circuits (ICs), a single packaged IC soldered to a main circuit board or a multi-chip module containing two or more ICs. In one example, the components of the baseband circuitry 1210 may be suitably combined in a single chip or chipset, or disposed on a same circuit board. In another example, some or all of the constituent components of the baseband circuitry 1210 and RF circuitry 1206 can be implemented together such as, for example, a system on a chip (SoC) or System-in-Package (SiP). In another example, some or all of the constituent components of the baseband circuitry 1210 can be implemented as a separate SoC that is communicatively coupled with and RF circuitry 1206 (or multiple instances of RF circuitry 1206). In yet another example, some or all of the constituent components of the baseband circuitry 1210 and the application circuitry 1005/1105 can be implemented together as individual SoCs mounted to a same circuit board (e.g., a “multi-chip package”).

In some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 1210 provides for communication compatible with one or more radio technologies. For example, in some embodiments, the baseband circuitry 1210 supports communication with an E-UTRAN or other WMAN, a WLAN, a WPAN. Embodiments in which the baseband circuitry 1210 is configured to support radio communications of more than one wireless protocol may be referred to as multi-mode baseband circuitry.

RF circuitry 1206 may enable communication with wireless networks using modulated electromagnetic radiation through a non-solid medium. In various embodiments, the RF circuitry 1206 can include switches, filters, amplifiers, etc. to facilitate the communication with the wireless network. RF circuitry 1206 can include a receive signal path, which can include circuitry to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry 1208 and provide baseband signals to the baseband circuitry 1210. RF circuitry 1206 may also include a transmit signal path, which can include circuitry to up-convert baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry 1210 and provide RF output signals to the FEM circuitry 1208 for transmission.

In some embodiments, the receive signal path of the RF circuitry 1206 can include mixer circuitry 1206A, amplifier circuitry 1206B and filter circuitry 1206C. In some embodiments, the transmit signal path of the RF circuitry 1206 can include filter circuitry 1206C and mixer circuitry 1206A. RF circuitry 1206 may also include synthesizer circuitry 1206D for synthesizing a frequency for use by the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path and the transmit signal path. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path can be configured to down-convert RF signals received from the FEM circuitry 1208 based on the synthesized frequency provided by synthesizer circuitry 1206D. The amplifier circuitry 1206B can be configured to amplify the down-converted signals and the filter circuitry 1206C may be a low-pass filter (LPF) or band-pass filter (BPF) configured to remove unwanted signals from the down-converted signals to generate output baseband signals. Output baseband signals may be provided to the baseband circuitry 1210 for further processing. In some embodiments, the output baseband signals may be zero-frequency baseband signals, although this is not a requirement. In some embodiments, mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path may comprise passive mixers, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the transmit signal path can be configured to up-convert input baseband signals based on the synthesized frequency provided by the synthesizer circuitry 1206D to generate RF output signals for the FEM circuitry 1208. The baseband signals may be provided by the baseband circuitry 1210 and may be filtered by filter circuitry 1206C.

In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 1206A of the transmit signal path can include two or more mixers and may be arranged for quadrature downconversion and upconversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 1206A of the transmit signal path can include two or more mixers and may be arranged for image rejection (e.g., Hartley image rejection). In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 1206A of the transmit signal path may be arranged for direct downconversion and direct upconversion, respectively. In some embodiments, the mixer circuitry 1206A of the receive signal path and the mixer circuitry 1206A of the transmit signal path can be configured for super-heterodyne operation.

In some embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be analog baseband signals, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. In some alternate embodiments, the output baseband signals and the input baseband signals may be digital baseband signals. In these alternate embodiments, the RF circuitry 1206 can include analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) circuitry and the baseband circuitry 1210 can include a digital baseband interface to communicate with the RF circuitry 1206.

In some dual-mode embodiments, a separate radio IC circuitry may be provided for processing signals for each spectrum, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect.

In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry 1206D may be a fractional-N synthesizer or a fractional N/N+1 synthesizer, although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect as other types of frequency synthesizers may be suitable. For example, synthesizer circuitry 1206D may be a delta-sigma synthesizer, a frequency multiplier, or a synthesizer comprising a phase-locked loop with a frequency divider.

The synthesizer circuitry 1206D can be configured to synthesize an output frequency for use by the mixer circuitry 1206A of the RF circuitry 1206 based on a frequency input and a divider control input. In some embodiments, the synthesizer circuitry 1206D may be a fractional N/N+1 synthesizer.

In some embodiments, frequency input may be provided by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), although that is not a requirement. Divider control input may be provided by either the baseband circuitry 1210 or the application circuitry 1005/1105 depending on the desired output frequency. In some embodiments, a divider control input (e.g., N) may be determined from a look-up table based on a channel indicated by the application circuitry 1005/1105.

Synthesizer circuitry 1206D of the RF circuitry 1206 can include a divider, a delay-locked loop (DLL), a multiplexer and a phase accumulator. In some embodiments, the divider may be a dual modulus divider (DMD) and the phase accumulator may be a digital phase accumulator (DPA). In some embodiments, the DMD can be configured to divide the input signal by either N or N+1 (e.g., based on a carry out) to provide a fractional division ratio. In some example embodiments, the DLL can include a set of cascaded, tunable, delay elements, a phase detector, a charge pump and a D-type flip-flop. In these embodiments, the delay elements can be configured to break a VCO period up into Nd equal packets of phase, where Nd is the number of delay elements in the delay line. In this way, the DLL provides negative feedback to help ensure that the total delay through the delay line is one VCO cycle.

In some embodiments, synthesizer circuitry 1206D can be configured to generate a carrier frequency as the output frequency, while in other embodiments, the output frequency may be a multiple of the carrier frequency (e.g., twice the carrier frequency, four times the carrier frequency) and used in conjunction with quadrature generator and divider circuitry to generate multiple signals at the carrier frequency with multiple different phases with respect to each other. In some embodiments, the output frequency may be a LO frequency (fLO). In some embodiments, the RF circuitry 1206 can include an IQ/polar converter.

FEM circuitry 1208 can include a receive signal path, which can include circuitry configured to operate on RF signals received from antenna array 1211, amplify the received signals and provide the amplified versions of the received signals to the RF circuitry 1206 for further processing. FEM circuitry 1208 may also include a transmit signal path, which can include circuitry configured to amplify signals for transmission provided by the RF circuitry 1206 for transmission by one or more of antenna elements of antenna array 1211. In various embodiments, the amplification through the transmit or receive signal paths may be done solely in the RF circuitry 1206, solely in the FEM circuitry 1208, or in both the RF circuitry 1206 and the FEM circuitry 1208.

In some embodiments, the FEM circuitry 1208 can include a TX/RX switch to switch between transmit mode and receive mode operation. The FEM circuitry 1208 can include a receive signal path and a transmit signal path. The receive signal path of the FEM circuitry 1208 can include an LNA to amplify received RF signals and provide the amplified received RF signals as an output (e.g., to the RF circuitry 1206). The transmit signal path of the FEM circuitry 1208 can include a power amplifier (PA) to amplify input RF signals (e.g., provided by RF circuitry 1206), and one or more filters to generate RF signals for subsequent transmission by one or more antenna elements of the antenna array 1211.

The antenna array 1211 comprises one or more antenna elements, each of which is configured convert electrical signals into radio waves to travel through the air and to convert received radio waves into electrical signals. For example, digital baseband signals provided by the baseband circuitry 1210 is converted into analog RF signals (e.g., modulated waveform) that will be amplified and transmitted via the antenna elements of the antenna array 1211 including one or more antenna elements (not shown). The antenna elements may be omnidirectional, direction, or a combination thereof. The antenna elements may be formed in a multitude of arranges as are known and/or discussed herein. The antenna array 1211 may comprise microstrip antennas or printed antennas that are fabricated on the surface of one or more printed circuit boards. The antenna array 1211 may be formed in as a patch of metal foil (e.g., a patch antenna) in a variety of shapes, and may be coupled with the RF circuitry 1206 and/or FEM circuitry 1208 using metal transmission lines or the like.

Exemplary Protocol Functions that can be Implemented in a Wireless Communication Device

Processors of the application circuitry 1005/1105 and processors of the baseband circuitry 1210 may be used to execute elements of one or more instances of a protocol stack. For example, processors of the baseband circuitry 1210, alone or in combination, may be used execute Layer 3, Layer 2, or Layer 1 functionality, while processors of the application circuitry 1005/1105 may utilize data (e.g., packet data) received from these layers and further execute Layer 4 functionality (e.g., Transmission Communication Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) layers). As referred to herein, Layer 3 may comprise a Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer, described in further detail below. As referred to herein, Layer 2 may comprise a Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, an Radio Link Control, (RLC) layer, and a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer, described in further detail below. As referred to herein, Layer 1 may comprise a Physical (PHY) layer of a UE/RAN node, described in further detail below.

FIG. 13 illustrates various protocol functions that can be implemented in a wireless communication device in accordance with various embodiments. In particular, FIG. 13 includes an arrangement 1300 showing interconnections between various protocol layers/entities. The following description of FIG. 13 is provided for various protocol layers/entities that operate in conjunction with the 5G/NR system standards and LTE system standards, but some or all of the aspects of FIG. 13 may be applicable to other wireless communication network systems as well.

The protocol layers of arrangement 1300 can include one or more of PHY 1310, MAC 1320, RLC 1330, PDCP 1340, SDAP 1347, RRC 1355, and NAS layer 1357, in addition to other higher layer functions not illustrated. The protocol layers can include one or more service access points (e.g., items 1359, 1356, 1350, 1349, 1345, 1335, 1325, and 1315 in FIG. 13) that provides communication between two or more protocol layers.

The PHY 1310 transmits and receives physical layer signals 1305 that may be received from or transmitted to one or more other communication devices. The physical layer signals 1305 may comprise one or more physical channels, such as those discussed herein. The PHY 1310 may further perform link adaptation or adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), power control, cell search (e.g., for initial synchronization and handover purposes), and other measurements used by higher layers, such as the RRC 1355. The PHY 1310 may still further perform error detection on the transport channels, forward error correction (FEC) coding/decoding of the transport channels, modulation/demodulation of physical channels, interleaving, rate matching, mapping onto physical channels, and MIMO antenna processing. In some embodiments, an instance of PHY 1310 may process requests from and provide indications to an instance of MAC 1320 via one or more PHY-SAP 1315. According to some embodiments, requests and indications communicated via PHY-SAP 1315 may comprise one or more transport channels.

Instance(s) of MAC 1320 processes requests from, and provides indications to, an instance of RLC 1330 via one or more MAC-SAPs 1325. These requests and indications communicated via the MAC-SAP 1325 may comprise one or more logical channels. The MAC 1320 may perform mapping between the logical channels and transport channels, multiplexing of MAC SDUs from one or more logical channels onto TBs to be delivered to PHY 1310 via the transport channels, de-multiplexing MAC SDUs to one or more logical channels from TBs delivered from the PHY 1310 via transport channels, multiplexing MAC SDUs onto TBs, scheduling information reporting, error correction through HARQ, and logical channel prioritization.

Instance(s) of RLC 1330 processes requests from and provides indications to an instance of PDCP 1340 via one or more radio link control service access points (RLC-SAP) 1335. These requests and indications communicated via RLC-SAP 1335 may comprise one or more RLC channels. The RLC 1330 may operate in a plurality of modes of operation, including: Transparent Mode™, Unacknowledged Mode (UM), and Acknowledged Mode (AM). The RLC 1330 may execute transfer of upper layer protocol data units (PDUs), error correction through automatic repeat request (ARQ) for AM data transfers, and concatenation, segmentation and reassembly of RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transfers. The RLC 1330 may also execute re-segmentation of RLC data PDUs for AM data transfers, reorder RLC data PDUs for UM and AM data transfers, detect duplicate data for UM and AM data transfers, discard RLC SDUs for UM and AM data transfers, detect protocol errors for AM data transfers, and perform RLC re-establishment.

Instance(s) of PDCP 1340 processes requests from and provides indications to instance(s) of RRC 1355 and/or instance(s) of SDAP 1347 via one or more packet data convergence protocol service access points (PDCP-SAP) 1345. These requests and indications communicated via PDCP-SAP 1345 may comprise one or more radio bearers. The PDCP 1340 may execute header compression and decompression of IP data, maintain PDCP Sequence Numbers (SNs), perform in-sequence delivery of upper layer PDUs at re-establishment of lower layers, eliminate duplicates of lower layer SDUs at re-establishment of lower layers for radio bearers mapped on RLC AM, cipher and decipher control plane data, perform integrity protection and integrity verification of control plane data, control timer-based discard of data, and perform security operations (e.g., ciphering, deciphering, integrity protection, integrity verification, etc.).

Instance(s) of SDAP 1347 processes requests from and provides indications to one or more higher layer protocol entities via one or more SDAP-SAP 1349. These requests and indications communicated via SDAP-SAP 1349 may comprise one or more QoS flows. The SDAP 1347 may map QoS flows to DRBs, and vice versa, and may also mark QFIs in DL and UL packets. A single SDAP entity 1347 can be configured for an individual PDU session. In the UL direction, the NG-RAN 710 may control the mapping of QoS Flows to DRB(s) in two different ways, reflective mapping or explicit mapping. For reflective mapping, the SDAP 1347 of a UE 701 may monitor the QFIs of the DL packets for each DRB, and may apply the same mapping for packets flowing in the UL direction. For a DRB, the SDAP 1347 of the UE 701 may map the UL packets belonging to the QoS flows(s) corresponding to the QoS flow ID(s) and PDU session observed in the DL packets for that DRB. To enable reflective mapping, the NG-RAN 910 may mark DL packets over the Uu interface with a QoS flow ID. The explicit mapping may involve the RRC 1355 configuring the SDAP 1347 with an explicit QoS flow to DRB mapping rule, which may be stored and followed by the SDAP 1347. In some embodiments, the SDAP 1347 may only be used in NR implementations and may not be used in LTE implementations.

The RRC 1355 configures, via one or more management service access points (M-SAP), aspects of one or more protocol layers, which can include one or more instances of PHY 1310, MAC 1320, RLC 1330, PDCP 1340 and SDAP 1347. In some embodiments, an instance of RRC 1355 may process requests from and provide indications to one or more NAS entities 1357 via one or more RRC-SAPs 1356. The main services and functions of the RRC 1355 can include broadcast of system information (e.g., included in MIBs or SIBs related to the NAS), broadcast of system information related to the access stratum (AS), paging, establishment, maintenance and release of an RRC connection between the UE 701 and RAN 710 (e.g., RRC connection paging, RRC connection establishment, RRC connection modification, and RRC connection release), establishment, configuration, maintenance and release of point to point Radio Bearers, security functions including key management, inter-RAT mobility, and measurement configuration for UE measurement reporting. The MIBs and SIBs may comprise one or more IEs, which may each comprise individual data fields or data structures.

The NAS 1357 forms the highest stratum of the control plane between the UE 701 and the AMF 921. The NAS 1357 supports the mobility of the UEs 701 and the session management procedures to establish and maintain IP connectivity between the UE 701 and a P-GW in LTE systems.

In accordance with various embodiments, one or more protocol entities of arrangement 1300 can be implemented in UEs 701, RAN nodes 711, AMF 921 in NR implementations or MME 821 in LTE implementations, UPF 902 in NR implementations or S-GW 822 and P-GW 823 in LTE implementations, or the like to be used for control plane or user plane communications protocol stack between the aforementioned devices. In such embodiments, one or more protocol entities that can be implemented in one or more of UE 701, gNB 711, AMF 921, etc. communicate with a respective peer protocol entity that can be implemented in or on another device using the services of respective lower layer protocol entities to perform such communication. In some embodiments, a gNB-CU of the gNB 711 may host the RRC 1355, SDAP 1347, and PDCP 1340 of the gNB that controls the operation of one or more gNB-DUs, and the gNB-DUs of the gNB 711 may each host the RLC 1330, MAC 1320, and PHY 1310 of the gNB 711.

In a first example, a control plane protocol stack may comprise, in order from highest layer to lowest layer, NAS 1357, RRC 1355, PDCP 1340, RLC 1330, MAC 1320, and PHY 1310. In this example, upper layers 1360 may be built on top of the NAS 1357, which includes an IP layer 1361, an SCTP 1362, and an application layer signaling protocol (AP) 1363.

In NR implementations, the AP 1363 may be an NG application protocol layer (NGAP or NG-AP) 1363 for the NG interface 713 defined between the NG-RAN node 711 and the AMF 921, or the AP 1363 may be an Xn application protocol layer (XnAP or Xn-AP) 1363 for the Xn interface 712 that is defined between two or more RAN nodes 711.

The NG-AP 1363 supports the functions of the NG interface 713 and may comprise Elementary Procedures (EPs). An NG-AP EP may be a unit of interaction between the NG-RAN node 711 and the AMF 921. The NG-AP 1363 services may comprise two groups: UE-associated services (e.g., services related to a UE 701) and non-UE-associated services (e.g., services related to the whole NG interface instance between the NG-RAN node 711 and AMF 921). These services can include functions including, but not limited to: a paging function for the sending of paging requests to NG-RAN nodes 711 involved in a particular paging area; a UE context management function for allowing the AMF 921 to establish, modify, and/or release a UE context in the AMF 921 and the NG-RAN node 711; a mobility function for UEs 701 in ECM-CONNECTED mode for intra-system HOs to support mobility within NG-RAN and inter-system HOs to support mobility from/to EPS systems; a NAS Signaling Transport function for transporting or rerouting NAS messages between UE 701 and AMF 921; a NAS node selection function for determining an association between the AMF 921 and the UE 701; NG interface management function(s) for setting up the NG interface and monitoring for errors over the NG interface; a warning message transmission function for providing means to transfer warning messages via NG interface or cancel ongoing broadcast of warning messages; a Configuration Transfer function for requesting and transferring of RAN configuration information (e.g., SON information, performance measurement (PM) data, etc.) between two RAN nodes 711 via CN 720; and/or other like functions.

The XnAP 1363 supports the functions of the Xn interface 712 and may comprise XnAP basic mobility procedures and XnAP global procedures. The XnAP basic mobility procedures may comprise procedures used to handle UE mobility within the NG RAN 711 (or E-UTRAN 810), such as handover preparation and cancellation procedures, SN Status Transfer procedures, UE context retrieval and UE context release procedures, RAN paging procedures, dual connectivity related procedures, and the like. The XnAP global procedures may comprise procedures that are not related to a specific UE 701, such as Xn interface setup and reset procedures, NG-RAN update procedures, cell activation procedures, and the like.

In LTE implementations, the AP 1363 can be an S1 Application Protocol layer (S1-AP) 1363 for the S1 interface 713 defined between an E-UTRAN node 711 and an MME, or the AP 1363 may be an X2 application protocol layer (X2AP or X2-AP) 1363 for the X2 interface 712 that is defined between two or more E-UTRAN nodes 711.

The S1 Application Protocol layer (S1-AP) 1363 supports the functions of the S1 interface, and similar to the NG-AP discussed previously, the S1-AP may comprise S1-AP EPs. An S1-AP EP may be a unit of interaction between the E-UTRAN node 711 and an MME 821 within an LTE CN 720. The S1-AP 1363 services may comprise two groups: UE-associated services and non UE-associated services. These services perform functions including, but not limited to: E-UTRAN Radio Access Bearer (E-RAB) management, UE capability indication, mobility, NAS signaling transport, RAN Information Management (RIM), and configuration transfer.

The X2AP 1363 supports the functions of the X2 interface 712 and may comprise X2AP basic mobility procedures and X2AP global procedures. The X2AP basic mobility procedures may comprise procedures used to handle UE mobility within the E-UTRAN 720, such as handover preparation and cancellation procedures, SN Status Transfer procedures, UE context retrieval and UE context release procedures, RAN paging procedures, dual connectivity related procedures, and the like. The X2AP global procedures may comprise procedures that are not related to a specific UE 701, such as X2 interface setup and reset procedures, load indication procedures, error indication procedures, cell activation procedures, and the like.

The SCTP layer (alternatively referred to as the SCTP/IP layer) 1362 provides guaranteed delivery of application layer messages (e.g., NGAP or XnAP messages in NR implementations, or S1-AP or X2AP messages in LTE implementations). The SCTP 1362 may ensure reliable delivery of signaling messages between the RAN node 711 and the AMF 921/MME 821 based, in part, on the IP protocol, supported by the IP 1361. The Internet Protocol layer (IP) 1361 may be used to perform packet addressing and routing functionality. In some embodiments the IP layer 1361 may use point-to-point transmission to deliver and convey PDUs. In this regard, the RAN node 711 may comprise L2 and L1 layer communication links (e.g., wired or wireless) with the MME/AMF to exchange information.

In a second example, a user plane protocol stack may comprise, in order from highest layer to lowest layer, SDAP 1347, PDCP 1340, RLC 1330, MAC 1320, and PHY 1310. The user plane protocol stack may be used for communication between the UE 701, the RAN node 711, and UPF 902 in NR implementations or an S-GW 822 and P-GW 823 in LTE implementations. In this example, upper layers 1351 may be built on top of the SDAP 1347, and can include a user datagram protocol (UDP) and IP security layer (UDP/IP) 1352, a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Tunneling Protocol for the user plane layer (GTP-U) 1353, and a User Plane PDU layer (UP PDU) 1363.

The transport network layer 1354 (also referred to as a “transport layer”) can be built on IP transport, and the GTP-U 1353 may be used on top of the UDP/IP layer 1352 (comprising a UDP layer and IP layer) to carry user plane PDUs (UP-PDUs). The IP layer (also referred to as the “Internet layer”) may be used to perform packet addressing and routing functionality. The IP layer may assign IP addresses to user data packets in any of IPv4, IPv6, or PPP formats, for example.

The GTP-U 1353 is be used for carrying user data within the GPRS core network and between the radio access network and the core network. The user data transported can be packets in any of IPv4, IPv6, or PPP formats, for example. The UDP/IP 1352 provides checksums for data integrity, port numbers for addressing different functions at the source and destination, and encryption and authentication on the selected data flows. The RAN node 711 and the S-GW 822 may utilize an S1-U interface to exchange user plane data via a protocol stack comprising an L1 layer (e.g., PHY 1310), an L2 layer (e.g., MAC 1320, RLC 1330, PDCP 1340, and/or SDAP 1347), the UDP/IP layer 1352, and the GTP-U 1353. The S-GW 822 and the P-GW 823 may utilize an S5/S8a interface to exchange user plane data via a protocol stack comprising an L1 layer, an L2 layer, the UDP/IP layer 1352, and the GTP-U 1353. As discussed previously, NAS protocols supports the mobility of the UE 701 and the session management procedures to establish and maintain IP connectivity between the UE 701 and the P-GW 823.

Moreover, although not illustrated in FIG. 13, an application layer may be present above the AP 1363 and/or the transport network layer 1354. The application layer may be a layer in which a user of the UE 701, RAN node 711, or other network element interacts with software applications being executed, for example, by application circuitry 1005 or application circuitry 1105, respectively. The application layer may also provide one or more interfaces for software applications to interact with communications systems of the UE 701 or RAN node 711, such as the baseband circuitry 1210. In some embodiments the IP layer and/or the application layer provides the same or similar functionality as layers 5-7, or portions thereof, of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model (e.g., OSI Layer 7—the application layer, OSI Layer 6—the presentation layer, and OSI Layer 5—the session layer).

FIG. 14 illustrates components of a core network in accordance with various embodiments. The components of the CN 820 can be implemented in one physical node or separate physical nodes including components to read and execute instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium). In some embodiments, the components of CN 920 can be implemented in a same or similar manner as discussed herein with regard to the components of CN 820. In some embodiments, NFV is utilized to virtualize any or all of the above-described network node functions via executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage mediums (described in further detail below). A logical instantiation of the CN 820 may be referred to as a network slice 1401, and individual logical instantiations of the CN 820 provides specific network capabilities and network characteristics. A logical instantiation of a portion of the CN 820 may be referred to as a network sub-slice 1402 (e.g., the network sub-slice 1402 is shown to include the P-GW 823 and the PCRF 826).

As used herein, the terms “instantiate,” “instantiation,” and the like may refer to the creation of an instance, and an “instance” may refer to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code. A network instance may refer to information identifying a domain, which may be used for traffic detection and routing in case of different IP domains or overlapping IP addresses. A network slice instance may refer to a set of network functions (NFs) instances and the resources (e.g., compute, storage, and networking resources) required to deploy the network slice.

With respect to 5G systems (see, for example, FIG. 9 above), a network slice always comprises a Radio Access Network (RAN) part and a core network (CN) part. The support of network slicing relies on the principle that traffic for different slices is handled by different Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sessions. The network can realize the different network slices by scheduling and also by providing different L1/L2 configurations. The UE 901 provides assistance information for network slice selection in an appropriate Radio Resource Control (RRC) message, if it has been provided by NAS. While the network can support large number of slices, the UE need not support more than 8 slices simultaneously.

A network slice can include the CN 920 control plane and user plane Network Functions (NFs), Next Generation Radio Access Networks (NG-RANs) 910 in a serving PLMN, and a N3IWF functions in the serving PLMN. Individual network slices may have different S-NSSAI and/or may have different SSTs. NSSAI includes one or more S-NSSAIs, and each network slice is uniquely identified by an S-NSSAI. Network slices may differ for supported features and network functions optimizations, and/or multiple network slice instances may deliver the same service/features but for different groups of UEs 901 (e.g., enterprise users). For example, individual network slices may deliver different committed service(s) and/or may be dedicated to a particular customer or enterprise. In this example, each network slice may have different S-NSSAIs with the same SST but with different slice differentiators. Additionally, a single UE may be served with one or more network slice instances simultaneously via a 5G AN and associated with eight different S-NSSAIs. Moreover, an AMF 921 instance serving an individual UE 901 may belong to each of the network slice instances serving that UE.

Network Slicing in the NG-RAN 910 involves RAN slice awareness. RAN slice awareness includes differentiated handling of traffic for different network slices, which have been pre-configured. Slice awareness in the NG-RAN 910 is introduced at the PDU session level by indicating the S-NSSAI corresponding to a PDU session in all signaling that includes PDU session resource information. How the NG-RAN 910 supports the slice enabling in terms of NG-RAN functions (e.g., the set of network functions that comprise each slice) is implementation dependent. The NG-RAN 910 selects the RAN part of the network slice using assistance information provided by the UE 901 or the 5GC 920, which unambiguously identifies one or more of the pre-configured network slices in the PLMN. The NG-RAN 910 also supports resource management and policy enforcement between slices as per SLAs. A single NG-RAN node supports multiple slices, and the NG-RAN 910 may also apply an appropriate RRM policy for the SLA in place to each supported slice. The NG-RAN 910 may also support QoS differentiation within a slice.

The NG-RAN 910 may also use the UE assistance information for the selection of an AMF 921 during an initial attach, if available. The NG-RAN 910 uses the assistance information for routing the initial NAS to an AMF 921. If the NG-RAN 910 is unable to select an AMF 921 using the assistance information, or the UE 901 does not provide any such information, the NG-RAN 910 sends the NAS signaling to a default AMF 921, which may be among a pool of AMFs 921. For subsequent accesses, the UE 901 provides a temp ID, which is assigned to the UE 901 by the 5GC 920, to enable the NG-RAN 910 to route the NAS message to the appropriate AMF 921 as long as the temp ID is valid. The NG-RAN 910 is aware of, and can reach, the AMF 921 that is associated with the temp ID. Otherwise, the method for initial attach applies.

The NG-RAN 910 supports resource isolation between slices. NG-RAN 910 resource isolation may be achieved by means of RRM policies and protection mechanisms that should avoid that shortage of shared resources if one slice breaks the service level agreement for another slice. In some embodiments, it is possible to fully dedicate NG-RAN 910 resources to a certain slice. How NG-RAN 910 supports resource isolation is implementation dependent.

Some slices may be available only in part of the network. Awareness in the NG-RAN 910 of the slices supported in the cells of its neighbors may be beneficial for inter-frequency mobility in connected mode. The slice availability may not change within the UE's registration area. The NG-RAN 910 and the 5GC 920 are responsible to handle a service request for a slice that may or may not be available in a given area. Admission or rejection of access to a slice may depend on factors such as support for the slice, availability of resources, support of the requested service by NG-RAN 910.

The UE 901 may be associated with multiple network slices simultaneously. In case the UE 901 is associated with multiple slices simultaneously, only one signaling connection is maintained, and for intra-frequency cell reselection, the UE 901 tries to camp on the best cell. For inter-frequency cell reselection, dedicated priorities can be used to control the frequency on which the UE 901 camps. The 5GC 920 is to validate that the UE 901 has the rights to access a network slice. Prior to receiving an Initial Context Setup Request message, the NG-RAN 910 may be allowed to apply some provisional/local policies, based on awareness of a particular slice that the UE 901 is requesting to access. During the initial context setup, the NG-RAN 910 is informed of the slice for which resources are being requested.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) architectures and infrastructures may be used to virtualize one or more NFs, alternatively performed by proprietary hardware, onto physical resources comprising a combination of industry-standard server hardware, storage hardware, or switches. In other words, NFV systems can be used to execute virtual or reconfigurable implementations of one or more EPC components/functions.

FIG. 15 is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, of a system 1500 to support Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). The system 1500 is illustrated as including a Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) 1502, a Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) 1504, a Virtualized Network Function Manager (VNFM) 1506, VNFs 1508, an Element Manager (EM) 1510, a Network Functions Virtualization Orchestrator (NFVO) 1512, and a Network Manager (NM) 1514.

The VIM 1502 manages the resources of the NFVI 1504. The NFVI 1504 can include physical or virtual resources and applications (including hypervisors) used to execute the system 1500. The VIM 1502 may manage the life cycle of virtual resources with the NFVI 1504 (e.g., creation, maintenance, and tear down of Virtual Machines (VMs) associated with one or more physical resources), track VM instances, track performance, fault and security of VM instances and associated physical resources, and expose VM instances and associated physical resources to other management systems.

The VNFM 1506 may manage the VNFs 1508. The VNFs 1508 may be used to execute Evolved Packet Core (EPC) components/functions. The VNFM 1506 may manage the life cycle of the VNFs 1508 and track performance, fault and security of the virtual aspects of VNFs 1508. The EM 1510 may track the performance, fault and security of the functional aspects of VNFs 1508. The tracking data from the VNFM 1506 and the EM 1510 may comprise, for example, PM data used by the VIM 1502 or the NFVI 1504. Both the VNFM 1506 and the EM 1510 can scale up/down the quantity of VNFs of the system 1500.

The NFVO 1512 may coordinate, authorize, release and engage resources of the NFVI 1504 in order to provide the requested service (e.g., to execute an EPC function, component, or slice). The NM 1514 provides a package of end-user functions with the responsibility for the management of a network, which can include network elements with VNFs, non-virtualized network functions, or both (management of the VNFs may occur via the EM 1510).

FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating components, according to some example embodiments, able to read instructions from a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (e.g., a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium) and perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. Specifically, FIG. 16 shows a diagrammatic representation of hardware resources 1600 including one or more processors (or processor cores) 1610, one or more memory/storage devices 1620, and one or more communication resources 1630, each of which may be communicatively coupled via a bus 1640. For embodiments where node virtualization (e.g., NFV) is utilized, a hypervisor 1602 may be executed to provide an execution environment for one or more network slices/sub-slices to utilize the hardware resources 1600.

The processors 1610 can include, for example, a processor 1612 and a processor 1614. The processor(s) 1610 may be, for example, a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a DSP such as a baseband processor, an ASIC, an FPGA, a radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor (including those discussed herein), or any suitable combination thereof.

The memory/storage devices 1620 can include main memory, disk storage, or any suitable combination thereof. The memory/storage devices 1620 can include, but are not limited to, any type of volatile or nonvolatile memory such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), Flash memory, solid-state storage, etc.

The communication resources 1630 can include interconnection or network interface components or other suitable devices to communicate with one or more peripheral devices 1604 or one or more databases 1606 via a network 1608. For example, the communication resources 1630 can include wired communication components (e.g., for coupling via USB), cellular communication components, NFC components, Bluetooth® (or Bluetooth® Low Energy) components, Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components.

Instructions 1650 may comprise software, a program, an application, an applet, an app, or other executable code for causing at least any of the processors 1610 to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein. The instructions 1650 may reside, completely or partially, within at least one of the processors 1610 (e.g., within the processor's cache memory), the memory/storage devices 1620, or any suitable combination thereof. Furthermore, any portion of the instructions 1650 may be transferred to the hardware resources 1600 from any combination of the peripheral devices 1604 or the databases 1606. Accordingly, the memory of processors 1610, the memory/storage devices 1620, the peripheral devices 1604, and the databases 1606 are examples of computer-readable and machine-readable media.

Exemplary Operation

FIG. 17 illustrates a flowchart of an exemplary operation in accordance with various embodiments. The disclosure is not limited to this operational description. Rather, it will be apparent to ordinary persons skilled in the relevant art(s) that other operational control flows are within the scope and spirit of the present disclosure. The following discussion describes an exemplary operational control flow 1700.

In some embodiments, the electronic device(s), network(s), system(s), chip(s) or component(s), or portions or implementations thereof, of FIGS. 1-16, or some other figure herein, can be configured to perform one or more processes, techniques, or methods as described herein, or portions thereof. One such process is depicted in FIG. 17. For example, exemplary operational control flow 1700 can include constructing, or causing to construct, a PDCCH blind decoding candidate at operation 1702; and transmitting, or causing to transmit, each PDCCH blind decoding candidate in a plurality of repetitions at operation 1702, wherein at least a first repetition is transmitted from a first TRP, and a second repetition is transmitted from a second TRP.

For one or more embodiments, at least one of the components set forth in one or more of the preceding figures can be configured to perform one or more operations, techniques, processes, and/or methods as set forth in the example section below. For example, the baseband circuitry as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below. For another example, circuitry associated with a UE, base station, network element, etc. as described above in connection with one or more of the preceding figures can be configured to operate in accordance with one or more of the examples set forth below in the example section.

Abbreviations

For the purposes of this disclosure, the following abbreviations may apply to the examples and embodiments discussed herein, but are not meant to be limiting.

-   -   3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project     -   4G Fourth Generation     -   5G Fifth Generation     -   5GC 5G Core network     -   ACK Acknowledgement     -   AF Application Function     -   AM Acknowledged Mode     -   AMBR Aggregate Maximum Bit Rate     -   AMF Access and Mobility Management Function     -   AN Access Network     -   ANR Automatic Neighbour Relation     -   AP Application Protocol, Antenna Port, Access Point     -   API Application Programming Interface     -   APN Access Point Name     -   ARP Allocation and Retention Priority     -   ARQ Automatic Repeat Request     -   AS Access Stratum     -   ASN.1 Abstract Syntax Notation One     -   AUSF Authentication Server Function     -   AWGN Additive White Gaussian Noise     -   BCH Broadcast Channel     -   BER Bit Error Ratio     -   BFD Beam Failure Detection     -   BLER Block Error Rate     -   BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying     -   BRAS Broadband Remote Access Server     -   BSS Business Support System     -   BS Base Station     -   BSR Buffer Status Report     -   BW Bandwidth     -   BWP Bandwidth Part     -   C-RNTI Cell Radio Network Temporary Identity     -   CA Carrier Aggregation, Certification Authority     -   CAPEX CAPital EXpenditure     -   CBRA Contention Based Random Access     -   CC Component Carrier, Country Code, Cryptographic Checksum     -   CCA Clear Channel Assessment     -   CCE Control Channel Element     -   CCCH Common Control Channel     -   CE Coverage Enhancement     -   CDM Content Delivery Network     -   CDMA Code-Division Multiple Access     -   CFRA Contention Free Random Access     -   CG Cell Group     -   CI Cell Identity     -   CID Cell-ID (e.g., positioning method)     -   CIM Common Information Model     -   CIR Carrier to Interference Ratio     -   CK Cipher Key     -   CM Connection Management, Conditional Mandatory     -   CMAS Commercial Mobile Alert Service     -   CMD Command     -   CMS Cloud Management System     -   CO Conditional Optional     -   CoMP Coordinated Multi-Point     -   CORESET Control Resource Set     -   COTS Commercial Off-The-Shelf     -   CP Control Plane, Cyclic Prefix, Connection Point     -   CPD Connection Point Descriptor     -   CPE Customer Premise Equipment     -   CPICH Common Pilot Channel     -   CQI Channel Quality Indicator     -   CPU CSI processing unit, Central Processing Unit     -   C/R Command/Response field bit     -   CRAN Cloud Radio Access Network, Cloud RAN     -   CRB Common Resource Block     -   CRC Cyclic Redundancy Check     -   CRI Channel-State Information Resource Indicator, CSI-RS         Resource Indicator     -   C-RNTI Cell RNTI     -   CS Circuit Switched     -   CSAR Cloud Service Archive     -   CSI Channel-State Information     -   CSI-IM CSI Interference Measurement     -   CSI-RS CSI Reference Signal     -   CSI-RSRP CSI reference signal received power     -   CSI-RSRQ CSI reference signal received quality     -   CSI-SINR CSI signal-to-noise and interference ratio     -   CSMA Carrier Sense Multiple Access     -   CSMA/CA CSMA with collision avoidance     -   CSS Common Search Space, Cell-specific Search Space     -   CTS Clear-to-Send     -   CW Codeword     -   CWS Contention Window Size     -   D2D Device-to-Device     -   DC Dual Connectivity, Direct Current     -   DCI Downlink Control Information     -   DF Deployment Flavour     -   DL Downlink     -   DMTF Distributed Management Task Force     -   DPDK Data Plane Development Kit     -   DM-RS, DMRS Demodulation Reference Signal     -   DN Data network     -   DRB Data Radio Bearer     -   DRS Discovery Reference Signal     -   DRX Discontinuous Reception     -   DSL Domain Specific Language. Digital Subscriber Line     -   DSLAM DSL Access Multiplexer     -   DwPTS Downlink Pilot Time Slot     -   E-LAN Ethernet Local Area Network     -   E2E End-to-End     -   ECCA extended clear channel assessment, extended CCA     -   ECCE Enhanced Control Channel Element, Enhanced CCE     -   ED Energy Detection     -   EDGE Enhanced Datarates for GSM Evolution (GSM Evolution)     -   EGMF Exposure Governance Management Function     -   EGPRS Enhanced GPRS     -   EIR Equipment Identity Register     -   eLAA enhanced Licensed Assisted Access, enhanced LAA     -   EM Element Manager     -   eMBB Enhanced Mobile Broadband     -   EMS Element Management System     -   eNB evolved NodeB, E-UTRAN Node B     -   EN-DC E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity     -   EPC Evolved Packet Core     -   EPDCCH enhanced PDCCH, enhanced Physical Downlink Control Cannel     -   EPRE Energy per resource element     -   EPS Evolved Packet System     -   EREG enhanced REG, enhanced resource element groups     -   ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute     -   ETWS Earthquake and Tsunami Warning System     -   eUICC embedded UICC, embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card     -   E-UTRA Evolved UTRA     -   E-UTRAN Evolved UTRAN     -   EV2X Enhanced V2X     -   F1AP F1 Application Protocol     -   F1-C F1 Control plane interface     -   F1-U F1 User plane interface     -   FACCH Fast Associated Control CHannel     -   FACCH/F Fast Associated Control Channel/Full rate     -   FACCH/H Fast Associated Control Channel/Half rate     -   FACH Forward Access Channel     -   FAUSCH Fast Uplink Signalling Channel     -   FB Functional Block     -   FBI Feedback Information     -   FCC Federal Communications Commission     -   FCCH Frequency Correction CHannel     -   FDD Frequency Division Duplex     -   FDM Frequency Division Multiplex     -   FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access     -   FE Front End     -   FEC Forward Error Correction     -   FFS For Further Study     -   FFT Fast Fourier Transformation     -   feLAA further enhanced Licensed Assisted Access, further         enhanced LAA     -   FN Frame Number     -   FPGA Field-Programmable Gate Array     -   FR Frequency Range     -   G-RNTI GERAN Radio Network Temporary Identity     -   GERAN GSM EDGE RAN, GSM EDGE Radio Access Network     -   GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node     -   GLONASS GLObal'naya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (Engl.:         Global Navigation Satellite System)     -   gNB Next Generation NodeB     -   gNB-CU gNB-centralized unit, Next Generation NodeB centralized         unit     -   gNB-DU gNB-distributed unit, Next Generation NodeB distributed         unit     -   GNSS Global Navigation Satellite System     -   GPRS General Packet Radio Service     -   GSM Global System for Mobile Communications, Groupe Special         Mobile     -   GTP GPRS Tunneling Protocol     -   GTP-U GPRS Tunnelling Protocol for User Plane     -   GTS Go To Sleep Signal (related to WUS)     -   GUMMEI Globally Unique MME Identifier     -   GUTI Globally Unique Temporary UE Identity     -   HARQ Hybrid ARQ, Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request     -   HANDO, HO Handover     -   HFN HyperFrame Number     -   HHO Hard Handover     -   HLR Home Location Register     -   HN Home Network     -   HO Handover     -   HPLMN Home Public Land Mobile Network     -   HSDPA High Speed Downlink Packet Access     -   HSN Hopping Sequence Number     -   HSPA High Speed Packet Access     -   HSS Home Subscriber Server     -   HSUPA High Speed Uplink Packet Access     -   HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol     -   HTTPS Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (https is http/1.1         over SSL, i.e. port 443)     -   I-Block Information Block     -   ICCID Integrated Circuit Card Identification     -   ICIC Inter-Cell Interference Coordination     -   ID Identity, identifier     -   IDFT Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform     -   IE Information element     -   IBE In-Band Emission     -   IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers     -   IEI Information Element Identifier     -   IEIDL Information Element Identifier Data Length     -   IETF Internet Engineering Task Force     -   IF Infrastructure     -   IM Interference Measurement, Intermodulation, IP Multimedia     -   IMC IMS Credentials     -   IMEI International Mobile Equipment Identity     -   IMGI International mobile group identity     -   IMPI IP Multimedia Private Identity     -   IMPU IP Multimedia PUblic identity     -   IMS IP Multimedia Subsystem     -   IMSI International Mobile Subscriber Identity     -   IoT Internet of Things     -   IP Internet Protocol     -   Ipsec IP Security, Internet Protocol Security     -   IP-CAN IP-Connectivity Access Network     -   IP-M IP Multicast     -   IPv4 Internet Protocol Version 4     -   IPv6 Internet Protocol Version 6     -   IR Infrared     -   IS In Sync     -   IRP Integration Reference Point     -   ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network     -   ISIM IM Services Identity Module     -   ISO International Organisation for Standardisation     -   ISP Internet Service Provider     -   IWF Interworking-Function     -   I-WLAN Interworking WLAN     -   K Constraint length of the convolutional code, USIM Individual         key     -   kB Kilobyte (500 bytes)     -   kbps kilo-bits per second     -   Kc Ciphering key     -   Ki Individual subscriber authentication key     -   KPI Key Performance Indicator     -   KQI Key Quality Indicator     -   KSI Key Set Identifier     -   ksps kilo-symbols per second     -   KVM Kernel Virtual Machine     -   L1 Layer 1 (physical layer)     -   L1-RSRP Layer 1 reference signal received power     -   L2 Layer 2 (data link layer)     -   L3 Layer 3 (network layer)     -   LAA Licensed Assisted Access     -   LAN Local Area Network     -   LBT Listen Before Talk     -   LCM LifeCycle Management     -   LCR Low Chip Rate     -   LCS Location Services     -   LCID Logical Channel ID     -   LI Layer Indicator     -   LLC Logical Link Control, Low Layer Compatibility     -   LPLMN Local PLMN     -   LPP LTE Positioning Protocol     -   LSB Least Significant Bit     -   LTE Long Term Evolution     -   LWA LTE-WLAN aggregation     -   LWIP LTE/WLAN Radio Level Integration with IPsec Tunnel     -   LTE Long Term Evolution     -   M2M Machine-to-Machine     -   MAC Medium Access Control (protocol layering context)     -   MAC Message authentication code (security/encryption context)     -   MAC-A MAC used for authentication and key agreement (TSG T WG3         context)     -   MAC-I MAC used for data integrity of signalling messages (TSG T         WG3 context)     -   MANO Management and Orchestration     -   MBMS Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Service     -   MB SFN Multimedia Broadcast multicast service Single Frequency         Network     -   MCC Mobile Country Code     -   MCG Master Cell Group     -   MCOT Maximum Channel Occupancy Time     -   MCS Modulation and coding scheme     -   MDAF Management Data Analytics Function     -   MDAS Management Data Analytics Service     -   MDT Minimization of Drive Tests     -   ME Mobile Equipment     -   MeNB master eNB     -   MER Message Error Ratio     -   MGL Measurement Gap Length     -   MGRP Measurement Gap Repetition Period     -   MIB Master Information Block, Management Information Base     -   MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output     -   MLC Mobile Location Centre     -   MM Mobility Management     -   MME Mobility Management Entity     -   MN Master Node     -   MO Measurement Object, Mobile Originated     -   MPBCH MTC Physical Broadcast CHannel     -   MPDCCH MTC Physical Downlink Control CHannel     -   MPDSCH MTC Physical Downlink Shared CHannel     -   MPRACH MTC Physical Random Access CHannel     -   MPUSCH MTC Physical Uplink Shared Channel     -   MPLS MultiProtocol Label Switching     -   MS Mobile Station     -   MSB Most Significant Bit     -   MSC Mobile Switching Centre     -   MSI Minimum System Information, MCH Scheduling Information     -   MSID Mobile Station Identifier     -   MSIN Mobile Station Identification Number     -   MSISDN Mobile Subscriber ISDN Number     -   MT Mobile Terminated, Mobile Termination     -   MTC Machine-Type Communications     -   mMTC massive MTC, massive Machine-Type Communications     -   MU-MIMO Multi User MIMO     -   MWUS MTC wake-up signal, MTC WUS     -   NACK Negative Acknowledgement     -   NAI Network Access Identifier     -   NAS Non-Access Stratum, Non-Access Stratum layer     -   NCT Network Connectivity Topology     -   NEC Network Capability Exposure     -   NE-DC NR-E-UTRA Dual Connectivity     -   NEF Network Exposure Function     -   NF Network Function     -   NFP Network Forwarding Path     -   NFPD Network Forwarding Path Descriptor     -   NFV Network Functions Virtualization     -   NFVI NFV Infrastructure     -   NFVO NFV Orchestrator     -   NG Next Generation, Next Gen     -   NGEN-DC NG-RAN E-UTRA-NR Dual Connectivity     -   NM Network Manager     -   NMS Network Management System     -   N-PoP Network Point of Presence     -   NMIB, N-MIB Narrowband MIB     -   NPBCH Narrowband Physical Broadcast CHannel     -   NPDCCH Narrowband Physical Downlink Control CHannel     -   NPDSCH Narrowband Physical Downlink Shared CHannel     -   NPRACH Narrowband Physical Random Access CHannel     -   NPUSCH Narrowband Physical Uplink Shared CHannel     -   NPSS Narrowband Primary Synchronization Signal     -   NSSS Narrowband Secondary Synchronization Signal     -   NR New Radio, Neighbour Relation     -   NRF NF Repository Function     -   NRS Narrowband Reference Signal     -   NS Network Service     -   NSA Non-Standalone operation mode     -   NSD Network Service Descriptor     -   NSR Network Service Record     -   NS SAI Network Slice Selection Assistance Information     -   S-NNSAI Single-NS SAI     -   NS SF Network Slice Selection Function     -   NW Network     -   NWUS Narrowband wake-up signal, Narrowband WUS     -   NZP Non-Zero Power     -   O&M Operation and Maintenance     -   ODU2 Optical channel Data Unit—type 2     -   OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing     -   OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access     -   OOB Out-of-band     -   OOS Out of Sync     -   OPEX OPerating EXpense     -   OSI Other System Information     -   OSS Operations Support System     -   OTA over-the-air     -   PAPR Peak-to-Average Power Ratio     -   PAR Peak to Average Ratio     -   PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel     -   PC Power Control, Personal Computer     -   PCC Primary Component Carrier, Primary CC     -   PCell Primary Cell     -   PCI Physical Cell ID, Physical Cell Identity     -   PCEF Policy and Charging Enforcement Function     -   PCF Policy Control Function     -   PCRF Policy Control and Charging Rules Function     -   PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol, Packet Data Convergence         Protocol layer     -   PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel     -   PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol     -   PDN Packet Data Network, Public Data Network     -   PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel     -   PDU Protocol Data Unit     -   PEI Permanent Equipment Identifiers     -   PFD Packet Flow Description     -   P-GW PDN Gateway     -   PHICH Physical hybrid-ARQ indicator channel     -   PHY Physical layer     -   PLMN Public Land Mobile Network     -   PIN Personal Identification Number     -   PM Performance Measurement     -   PMI Precoding Matrix Indicator     -   PNF Physical Network Function     -   PNFD Physical Network Function Descriptor     -   PNFR Physical Network Function Record     -   POC PTT over Cellular     -   PP, PTP Point-to-Point     -   PPP Point-to-Point Protocol     -   PRACH Physical RACH     -   PRB Physical resource block     -   PRG Physical resource block group     -   ProSe Proximity Services, Proximity-Based Service     -   PRS Positioning Reference Signal     -   PRR Packet Reception Radio     -   PS Packet Services     -   PSBCH Physical Sidelink Broadcast Channel     -   PSDCH Physical Sidelink Downlink Channel     -   PSCCH Physical Sidelink Control Channel     -   PSSCH Physical Sidelink Shared Channel     -   PSCell Primary SCell     -   PSS Primary Synchronization Signal     -   PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network     -   PT-RS Phase-tracking reference signal     -   PTT Push-to-Talk     -   PUCCH Physical Uplink Control Channel     -   PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel     -   QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation     -   QCI QoS class of identifier     -   QCL Quasi co-location     -   QFI QoS Flow ID, QoS Flow Identifier     -   QoS Quality of Service     -   QPSK Quadrature (Quaternary) Phase Shift Keying     -   QZSS Quasi-Zenith Satellite System     -   RA-RNTI Random Access RNTI     -   RAB Radio Access Bearer, Random Access Burst     -   RACH Random Access Channel     -   RADIUS Remote Authentication Dial In User Service     -   RAN Radio Access Network     -   RAND RANDom number (used for authentication)     -   RAR Random Access Response     -   RAT Radio Access Technology     -   RAU Routing Area Update     -   RB Resource block, Radio Bearer     -   RBG Resource block group     -   REG Resource Element Group     -   Rel Release     -   REQ REQuest     -   RF Radio Frequency     -   RI Rank Indicator     -   MV Resource indicator value     -   RL Radio Link     -   RLC Radio Link Control, Radio Link Control layer     -   RLC AM RLC Acknowledged Mode     -   RLC UM RLC Unacknowledged Mode     -   RLF Radio Link Failure     -   RLM Radio Link Monitoring     -   RLM-RS Reference Signal for RLM     -   RM Registration Management     -   RMC Reference Measurement Channel     -   RMSI Remaining MSI, Remaining Minimum System Information     -   RN Relay Node     -   RNC Radio Network Controller     -   RNL Radio Network Layer     -   RNTI Radio Network Temporary Identifier     -   ROHC RObust Header Compression     -   RRC Radio Resource Control, Radio Resource Control layer     -   RRM Radio Resource Management     -   RS Reference Signal     -   RSRP Reference Signal Received Power     -   RSRQ Reference Signal Received Quality     -   RS SI Received Signal Strength Indicator     -   RSU Road Side Unit     -   RSTD Reference Signal Time difference     -   RTP Real Time Protocol     -   RTS Ready-To-Send     -   RTT Round Trip Time     -   Rx Reception, Receiving, Receiver     -   S1AP S1 Application Protocol     -   S1-MME S1 for the control plane     -   S1-U S1 for the user plane     -   S-GW Serving Gateway     -   S-RNTI SRNC Radio Network Temporary Identity     -   S-TMSI SAE Temporary Mobile Station Identifier     -   SA Standalone operation mode     -   SAE System Architecture Evolution     -   SAP Service Access Point     -   SAPD Service Access Point Descriptor     -   SAPI Service Access Point Identifier     -   SCC Secondary Component Carrier, Secondary CC     -   SCell Secondary Cell     -   SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access     -   SCG Secondary Cell Group     -   SCM Security Context Management     -   SCS Subcarrier Spacing     -   SCTP Stream Control Transmission Protocol     -   SDAP Service Data Adaptation Protocol, Service Data Adaptation         Protocol layer     -   SDL Supplementary Downlink     -   SDNF Structured Data Storage Network Function     -   SDP Service Discovery Protocol (Bluetooth related)     -   SDSF Structured Data Storage Function     -   SDU Service Data Unit     -   SEAF Security Anchor Function     -   SeNB secondary eNB     -   SEPP Security Edge Protection Proxy     -   SFI Slot format indication     -   SFTD Space-Frequency Time Diversity, SFN and frame timing     -   difference     -   SFN System Frame Number     -   SgNB Secondary gNB     -   SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node     -   S-GW Serving Gateway     -   SI System Information     -   SI-RNTI System Information RNTI     -   SIB System Information Block     -   SIM Subscriber Identity Module     -   SIP Session Initiated Protocol     -   SiP System in Package     -   SL Sidelink     -   SLA Service Level Agreement     -   SM Session Management     -   SMF Session Management Function     -   SMS Short Message Service     -   SMSF SMS Function     -   SMTC SSB-based Measurement Timing Configuration     -   SN Secondary Node, Sequence Number     -   SoC System on Chip     -   SON Self-Organizing Network     -   SpCell Special Cell     -   SP-CSI-RNTI Semi-Persistent CSI RNTI     -   SPS Semi-Persistent Scheduling     -   SQN Sequence number     -   SR Scheduling Request     -   SRB Signalling Radio Bearer     -   SRS Sounding Reference Signal     -   SS Synchronization Signal     -   SSB Synchronization Signal Block, SS/PBCH Block     -   SSBRI SS/PBCH Block Resource Indicator, Synchronization Signal         Block Resource Indicator     -   SSC Session and Service Continuity     -   SS-RSRP Synchronization Signal based Reference Signal Received         Power     -   SS-RSRQ Synchronization Signal based Reference Signal Received         Quality     -   SS-SINR Synchronization Signal based Signal to Noise and         Interference Ratio     -   SSS Secondary Synchronization Signal     -   SSSG Search Space Set Group     -   SSSIF Search Space Set Indicator     -   SST Slice/Service Types     -   SU-MIMO Single User MIMO     -   SUL Supplementary Uplink     -   TA Timing Advance, Tracking Area     -   TAC Tracking Area Code     -   TAG Timing Advance Group     -   TAU Tracking Area Update     -   TB Transport Block     -   TBS Transport Block Size     -   TBD To Be Defined     -   TCI Transmission Configuration Indicator     -   TCP Transmission Communication Protocol     -   TDD Time Division Duplex     -   TDM Time Division Multiplexing     -   TDMA Time Division Multiple Access     -   TE Terminal Equipment     -   TEID Tunnel End Point Identifier     -   TFT Traffic Flow Template     -   TMSI Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity     -   TNL Transport Network Layer     -   TPC Transmit Power Control     -   TPMI Transmitted Precoding Matrix Indicator     -   TR Technical Report     -   TRP, TRxP Transmission Reception Point     -   TRS Tracking Reference Signal     -   TRx Transceiver     -   TS Technical Specifications, Technical Standard     -   TTI Transmission Time Interval     -   Tx Transmission, Transmitting, Transmitter     -   U-RNTI UTRAN Radio Network Temporary Identity     -   UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter     -   UCI Uplink Control Information     -   UE User Equipment     -   UDM Unified Data Management     -   UDP User Datagram Protocol     -   UDSF Unstructured Data Storage Network Function     -   UICC Universal Integrated Circuit Card     -   UL Uplink     -   UM Unacknowledged Mode     -   UML Unified Modelling Language     -   UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System     -   UP User Plane     -   UPF User Plane Function     -   URI Uniform Resource Identifier     -   URL Uniform Resource Locator     -   URLLC Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency     -   USB Universal Serial Bus     -   USIM Universal Subscriber Identity Module     -   USS UE-specific search space     -   UTRA UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access     -   UTRAN Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network     -   UwPTS Uplink Pilot Time Slot     -   V2I Vehicle-to-Infrastruction     -   V2P Vehicle-to-Pedestrian     -   V2V Vehicle-to-Vehicle     -   V2X Vehicle-to-everything     -   VIM Virtualized Infrastructure Manager     -   VL Virtual Link,     -   VLAN Virtual LAN, Virtual Local Area Network     -   VM Virtual Machine     -   VNF Virtualized Network Function     -   VNFFG VNF Forwarding Graph     -   VNFFGD VNF Forwarding Graph Descriptor     -   VNFM VNF Manager     -   VoIP Voice-over-IP, Voice-over-Internet Protocol     -   VPLMN Visited Public Land Mobile Network     -   VPN Virtual Private Network     -   VRB Virtual Resource Block     -   WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access     -   WLAN Wireless Local Area Network     -   WMAN Wireless Metropolitan Area Network     -   WPAN Wireless Personal Area Network     -   X2-C X2-Control plane     -   X2-U X2-User plane     -   XML eXtensible Markup Language     -   2ES EXpected user RESponse     -   XOR eXclusive OR     -   ZC Zadoff-Chu     -   ZP Zero Power

Exemplary Terminology

For the purposes of the present document, the following terms and definitions are applicable to the examples and embodiments discussed herein, but are not meant to be limiting.

The term “circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes hardware components such as an electronic circuit, a logic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a field-programmable device (FPD) (e.g., a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device (PLD), a complex PLD (CPLD), a high-capacity PLD (HCPLD), a structured ASIC, or a programmable SoC), digital signal processors (DSPs), etc., that are configured to provide the described functionality. In some embodiments, the circuitry may execute one or more software or firmware programs to provide at least some of the described functionality. The term “circuitry” may also refer to a combination of one or more hardware elements (or a combination of circuits used in an electrical or electronic system) with the program code used to carry out the functionality of that program code. In these embodiments, the combination of hardware elements and program code may be referred to as a particular type of circuitry.

The term “processor circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes circuitry capable of sequentially and automatically carrying out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations, or recording, storing, and/or transferring digital data. The term “processor circuitry” may refer to one or more application processors, one or more baseband processors, a physical central processing unit (CPU), a single-core processor, a dual-core processor, a triple-core processor, a quad-core processor, and/or any other device capable of executing or otherwise operating computer-executable instructions, such as program code, software modules, and/or functional processes. The terms “application circuitry” and/or “baseband circuitry” may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as, “processor circuitry.”

The term “interface circuitry” as used herein refers to, is part of, or includes circuitry that enables the exchange of information between two or more components or devices. The term “interface circuitry” may refer to one or more hardware interfaces, for example, buses, I/O interfaces, peripheral component interfaces, network interface cards, and/or the like.

The term “user equipment” or “UE” as used herein refers to a device with radio communication capabilities and may describe a remote user of network resources in a communications network. The term “user equipment” or “UE” may be considered synonymous to, and may be referred to as, client, mobile, mobile device, mobile terminal, user terminal, mobile unit, mobile station, mobile user, subscriber, user, remote station, access agent, user agent, receiver, radio equipment, reconfigurable radio equipment, reconfigurable mobile device, etc. Furthermore, the term “user equipment” or “UE” may include any type of wireless/wired device or any computing device including a wireless communications interface.

The term “network element” as used herein refers to physical or virtualized equipment and/or infrastructure used to provide wired or wireless communication network services. The term “network element” may be considered synonymous to and/or referred to as a networked computer, networking hardware, network equipment, network node, router, switch, hub, bridge, radio network controller, RAN device, RAN node, gateway, server, virtualized VNF, NFVI, and/or the like.

The term “computer system” as used herein refers to any type interconnected electronic devices, computer devices, or components thereof. Additionally, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to various components of a computer that are communicatively coupled with one another. Furthermore, the term “computer system” and/or “system” may refer to multiple computer devices and/or multiple computing systems that are communicatively coupled with one another and configured to share computing and/or networking resources.

The term “appliance,” “computer appliance,” or the like, as used herein refers to a computer device or computer system with program code (e.g., software or firmware) that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. A “virtual appliance” is a virtual machine image to be implemented by a hypervisor-equipped device that virtualizes or emulates a computer appliance or otherwise is dedicated to provide a specific computing resource.

The term “resource” as used herein refers to a physical or virtual device, a physical or virtual component within a computing environment, and/or a physical or virtual component within a particular device, such as computer devices, mechanical devices, memory space, processor/CPU time, processor/CPU usage, processor and accelerator loads, hardware time or usage, electrical power, input/output operations, ports or network sockets, channel/link allocation, throughput, memory usage, storage, network, database and applications, workload units, and/or the like. A “hardware resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by physical hardware element(s). A “virtualized resource” may refer to compute, storage, and/or network resources provided by virtualization infrastructure to an application, device, system, etc. The term “network resource” or “communication resource” may refer to resources that are accessible by computer devices/systems via a communications network. The term “system resources” may refer to any kind of shared entities to provide services, and may include computing and/or network resources. System resources may be considered as a set of coherent functions, network data objects or services, accessible through a server where such system resources reside on a single host or multiple hosts and are clearly identifiable.

The term “channel” as used herein refers to any transmission medium, either tangible or intangible, which is used to communicate data or a data stream. The term “channel” may be synonymous with and/or equivalent to “communications channel,” “data communications channel,” “transmission channel,” “data transmission channel,” “access channel,” “data access channel,” “link,” “data link,” “carrier,” “radiofrequency carrier,” and/or any other like term denoting a pathway or medium through which data is communicated. Additionally, the term “link” as used herein refers to a connection between two devices through a RAT for the purpose of transmitting and receiving information.

The terms “instantiate,” “instantiation,” and the like as used herein refers to the creation of an instance. An “instance” also refers to a concrete occurrence of an object, which may occur, for example, during execution of program code.

The terms “coupled,” “communicatively coupled,” along with derivatives thereof are used herein. The term “coupled” may mean two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with one another, may mean that two or more elements indirectly contact each other but still cooperate or interact with each other, and/or may mean that one or more other elements are coupled or connected between the elements that are said to be coupled with each other. The term “directly coupled” may mean that two or more elements are in direct contact with one another. The term “communicatively coupled” may mean that two or more elements may be in contact with one another by a means of communication including through a wire or other interconnect connection, through a wireless communication channel or ink, and/or the like.

The term “information element” refers to a structural element containing one or more fields. The term “field” refers to individual contents of an information element, or a data element that contains content.

The term “SMTC” refers to an SSB-based measurement timing configuration configured by SSB-MeasurementTimingConfiguration.

The term “SSB” refers to an SS/PBCH block.

The term “a “Primary Cell” refers to the MCG cell, operating on the primary frequency, in which the UE either performs the initial connection establishment procedure or initiates the connection re-establishment procedure.

The term “Primary SCG Cell” refers to the SCG cell in which the UE performs random access when performing the Reconfiguration with Sync procedure for DC operation.

The term “Secondary Cell” refers to a cell providing additional radio resources on top of a Special Cell for a UE configured with CA.

The term “Secondary Cell Group” refers to the subset of serving cells comprising the PSCell and zero or more secondary cells for a UE configured with DC.

The term “Serving Cell” refers to the primary cell for a UE in RRC_CONNECTED not configured with CA/DC there is only one serving cell comprising of the primary cell.

The term “serving cell” or “serving cells” refers to the set of cells comprising the Special Cell(s) and all secondary cells for a UE in RRC_CONNECTED configured with CA/.

The term “Special Cell” refers to the PCell of the MCG or the PSCell of the SCG for DC operation; otherwise, the term “Special Cell” refers to the Pcell. 

1. An apparatus for enabling multi-Transmission Reception Point (TRP) transmission, the apparatus comprising: processor circuitry configured to construct a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) having plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates; and radio front end circuitry configured to transmit the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in accordance with a corresponding Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state from among a plurality of TCI states, each TCI state from among the plurality of TCI states being associated with a different TRP from among a plurality of TRPs.
 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein each PDCCH blind decoding candidate from among the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates is associated with a plurality of control channel element (CCEs), and wherein each CCE from among the plurality of CCEs is associated with a plurality of resource element group blocks (REGBs).
 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the processor circuitry is further configured to map the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates to the corresponding TCI state.
 4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the radio front end circuitry is configured to transmit the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a time domain.
 5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the radio front end circuitry is configured to transmit the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a frequency domain.
 6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the radio front end circuitry is configured to transmit the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a time-frequency domain.
 7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein a number of repetitions of the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates is configured as a parameter in a Control Resource Set (CORESET).
 8. A method for enabling multi-Transmission Reception Point (TRP) transmission, the method comprising: constructing, by a TRP from among a plurality of TRPs, a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) having a plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates; and transmitting, by the TRP, the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in accordance with a corresponding Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state from among a plurality of TCI states, each TCI state from among the plurality of TCI states being associated with a different TRP from among the plurality of TRPs.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein each PDCCH blind decoding candidate from among the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates is associated with a plurality of control channel element (CCEs), and wherein each CCE from among the plurality of CCEs is associated with a plurality of resource element group blocks (REGBs).
 10. The method of claim 9, further comprising: mapping the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates to the corresponding TCI state.
 11. The method of claim 8, wherein the transmitting comprises: transmitting the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a time domain.
 12. The method of claim 8, wherein the transmitting comprises: transmitting the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a frequency domain.
 13. The method of claim 8, wherein the transmitting comprises: transmitting the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates in a time-frequency domain.
 14. The method of claim 8, wherein a number of repetitions of the plurality of repetitive PDCCH blind decoding candidates is configured as a parameter in a Control Resource Set (CORESET).
 15. A wireless communication system for enabling multi-Transmission Reception Point (TRP) transmission, the wireless communication system comprising: a first TRP from among a plurality of TRPs configured to transmit a first physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) blind decoding candidate in accordance with a first corresponding Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state from among a plurality of TCI states, each TCI state from among the plurality of TCI states being associated with a different TRP from among the plurality of TRPs; and a second TRP from among the plurality of TRPs configured to transmit a second PDCCH blind decoding candidate in accordance with a second corresponding Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state from among the plurality of TCI states, wherein the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate is a repetition of the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate.
 16. The wireless communication system of claim 15, wherein the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate and the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate are associated with a plurality of first control channel element (CCEs) and a plurality of second CCEs, respectively, and wherein each CCE from among the plurality of first CCEs is associated with a plurality of first resource element group blocks (REGBs) and each CCE from among the plurality of second CCEs is associated with a plurality of second REGBs.
 17. The wireless communication system of claim 15, wherein the first TRP and the second TRP are configured to transmit the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate and the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate, respectively, in a time domain.
 18. The wireless communication system of claim 15, wherein the first TRP and the second TRP are configured to transmit the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate and the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate, respectively, in a frequency domain.
 19. The wireless communication system of claim 15, wherein the first TRP and the second TRP are configured to transmit the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate and the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate, respectively, in a time-frequency domain.
 20. The wireless communication system of claim 15, further comprising: user equipment (UE) configured to receive the first PDCCH blind decoding candidate from the first TRP and the second PDCCH blind decoding candidate from the second TRP. 